Greedy Obasanjo To Lose 2,500 hectares Of Land Gbenga Daniel Gift-Daniel To Lose 100 Hectares Allocated To Himself

The insatiable greed of former President Olusegun Obasanjo was exposed on Thursday as a commission set up by the Ogun State government revealed that he was fraudulently allocated 2,250 hectares of land by the immediate past Governor of the state, Mr. Gbenga Daniel.

That allocation will now be cancelled.  

Obasanjo, who already owns thousands of hectares of land throughout the state, both developed and undeveloped, was allocated the land by Mr. Daniel in Soseri village.

Mr. Daniel, no slouch in the greed department, helped himself to the spoils of office by awarding 100 hectares to a privately owned company, K&F Daniels Ltd, at Oke Odan.

He will also lose that allocation, among others.  

These decisions follow the state government’s acceptance of the recommendation of the Judicial Commission of Inquiry into the Land Allocations, Acquisitions, Sales and Concessions of Government Properties and Administration of Land Policies, Rules and Regulations Between January 2004 and May 29, 2011 and Other Matters Connected.

The commission recommended that all the agricultural land allocations of state property made in Ogun State between January 2004 and May 29, 2011 be cancelled. 

Following the recommendation, the government has also revoked the allocation of land to Compass Newspaper, which is owned by Mr. Daniel.

The panel held that “the allocation made to this company at such gross under-value and the issuance of Certificate of Occupancy (C of O) to it before it paid any money for the land, were wrongful acts done contrary to established procedure and not in the public interest, and should therefore not be allowed to stand.”

It was also discovered that Daniel’s company, Western Publishing Company, got its C of O before it even paid for the land upon which its headquarters was built.

The C of O, numbered 025305 and registered as 12/12/676, was issued to the company on the 10th of March, 2008, when it had not paid for the land.

“It was stated that the price of the land as at the time it was bought was N24m, whereas Mr. Daniel merely paid N4m after he had signed the C of O for his company,” and the commission recommended that both the allocation and the Certificate of Occupancy be cancelled.

Among those who benefited from the last-minute gift-giving of land by Daniel were some of his former commissioners like Mrs. Folake Marcus-Bello (20 hectares), Lekan Bello (20 hectares) and Kehinde Sogunle (15 hectares).