Activist Wants Transparency In Land Purchase In Rivers Community

A human rights activist and public affairs analyst, Comrade Shadrack Wosah has called on agents purchasing land for Polo Cico Ltd, a Rivers State owned company to show transparency in their transactions with Egbeda Community.
Comrade Wosah, who spoke with The Tide in Port Harcourt at the weekend, expressed regrets that many vendors in the community were being ripped off in the name of purchase by the company’s agents.
He described the level of expropriation of land in the community as alarming and explained that the agrarian community would have no parcel of land to farm on if nothing was done to check the trend.
Comrade Wosah noted that a situation where a family owned more than 400 plots of land but was only paid for 221 plots was an unlawful expropriation of land.
He said the purchaser’s agents were anti-legal practitioners because of the shoddy deals they did with the connivance of some individuals with questionable characters in the community.
The activist remarked that the Polo Cico agents were taking advantage of the level of poverty in the community to exploit the people.
He decried the situation where the main agent of Polo Cico Ltd collected whopping 10% of purchase price as agency fee from the Vendors in spite of the fact that he wasn’t representing them.
According to him, you cannot collect 10% of purchase price from the vendors whose interest you don’t represent. “Besides, when money runs into millions of naira, ten percent cannot be charged as agency fees, he said.
“In normal practice, ten percent agency fee is not taken from one party in a transaction but five percent each for both parties.
He also lamented the situation where the nature of the agreement between the vendors and the purchasers was shrouded in secrecy as the former were only allowed to sign.
He said the company’s main agent who is also a lawyer was excluding his fellow learned colleagues from the transaction in order to continue the exploitation of the people.
Comrade Wosah averred that a company which was buying a large chunk of the community’s vast arable was silent about having a memorandum of understanding which according to him underscored the blatant intention to exploit the community.
The activist stated that it was wrong for one particular chief in the community to be used for all payments.
He said a similar incident arose during the purchase of land by Jocarls Ltd in the community and warned that posterity would not forgive them if they dealt treacherously with the community.

By: Chidi Enyie