The Vice-Chancellor, University of Lagos, Prof. Oluwatoyin Ogundipe, says land grabbers are hindering the development of hostels and other facilities in the institution.
Ogundipe, in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Saturday in Lagos, appealed to the federal and state governments to assist the institution in ejecting illegal occupants on its land.
He noted that the proposed accommodation of about 80 per cent of students of the institution could not be realised because of the activities of illegal settlers on some portions of the institution’s land.
According to him, the perennial problem of students’ accommodation has been a major challenge facing the 56 years old institution.
“The university has about 58,000 students, comprising undergraduates, postgraduates as well as part time students.
“From this number, we can only accommodate just about 8,500. So you can see that a larger majority of them cannot be accommodated.
“So, we have a shortfall of facilities in terms of students’ accommodation but if we can get the land back, I want to assure you that investors are waiting on the wing to come in.
“We have investors that want to build hostels for us on Public Private Partnership (PPP), Build Operate and Transfer (BOT) arrangement,’’ Ogundipe said.
He also said that there were “Joint Ventures that will ensure that we are able to accommodate at least 80 per cent of our students.”
He said the site for the university was acquired by the Federal Government between 1961 and 1962 during which all the affected families were duly compensated by the government.
He said because of the inability of the university to develop and occupy all the land space due to paucity of funds, some illegal occupants moved in, occupied the land and refused to vacate.
“Around the Iwaya axis of the campus, these illegal occupants have turned the place to their personal properties and all entreaties for them to vacate the place so that we can commence our projects have fallen on deaf ears.
“It is either they take us to court today or go to tribunal tomorrow, thereby wasting our time.
“As you can see, we cannot develop that axis and therefore, we want to seize this opportunity to call on the Federal Government as well as the Lagos State Government to assist us in ejecting these people out of the place.
“The Lagos State Government has however done something for us in this regard a few months ago to enable us get part of our land back but regrettably, these people are back again.
“Now, if the Federal Government can intervene and assist us eject these people, we will quickly get it fenced, though part of the land will still need to be sand filled,” the don said.
According to the vice-chancellor, the institution has written the Federal Government asking it to assist through Ecological Fund Office to sand fill the affected area.
He said that the university management did not find it appropriate to engage a developer for the task as such group might eventually want to benefit from it as well.
“We want to sound it loud and clear that we cannot and will not cede out any part of government’s property, it is just not possible.
“If you look at the terrain here at the University of Lagos, it is hostile because it is more of wetland, different from what we have in other universities.
“Yes, we have the aquatic splendour, on one hand, we love it but on the other side as regards the wet land, we can adopt it.
“We want to do something about it as we still have the vegetation,” Ogundipe told NAN (NAN)
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