Gbagyi villa: Kadpoly students insist on land recovery

Students of Kaduna Polytechnic have thrown their weight behind Governor Nasir El-Rufai on his decision to recover the Polytechnic land at Gbagyi villa located behind the institution’s Bypass Campus in Chikun Local Government Area of the state.

The students insisted that the state government should commence thorough investigation on those that masterminded the sharing of the land and bring them to justice because encroachment into the polytechnic land would make further expansion in future difficult.

Of the huge polytechnic’s four campuses, the Bypass Campus is the only one that still has land for any further structural expansion.

Governor El-Rufai had at the inception of his administration promised to reclaim all public lands, including lands belonging to schools, hospitals and other government agencies. The parcel of land on which Gbagyi villa is situated has been a source of dispute between the Gbagyi people and the polytechnic as residents of the community claim that ancestral owners were not duly paid to enable the transfer of ownership from Gbagyi people to the polytechnic.

The Governor, during his visit to the community last week, insisted on demolishing the buildings.

The students, staging a rally in support of El-Rufai’s decision, chanted solidarity songs, raising placards with inscriptions: ‘Leave our land alone,’ ‘We say NO to land encroachment,’ ‘Thank you El-Rufai,’ among others.

Speaking on behalf of the students, the President of the polytechnic’s Student Union Government (SUG), Comrade Usman Kareem, warned those ‘introducing ethnicity and religious sentiment into the matter,’ to desist, saying the state governor started school land recovery from his home town, Zaria, where houses built on Alhuda Huda College premises were demolished.