ABUJA COURT BARS FG FROM DEMOLISHING TRADEMORE ESTATE
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On Wednesday, a Jikwoyi High Court of the Federal Capital Territory issued an order of interim injunction prohibiting the Federal Government from entering or destroying the Trademore estate in Lugbe, Abuja.
The estate’s developers, Trademore International Holding Nigeria Ltd., were given an order for maintenance of the status quo by the Justice Zubairu Mohammed-presiding court.
The ex-parte application was argued by Benson Igbanoi, Esq., led by Vivian Oluchi Uche, who held the brief of the plaintiff’s attorney, Mike Ozekhome, SAN, before the judge, who then issued the order.
The senior attorney had brought the lawsuit on behalf of the estate against several FG officials and organizations that had threatened to destroy the estate due to flooding issues.
Hotjist had reported that no fewer than 100 buildings in Trademore Estate were covered in water during a heavy downpour in the early hours of Friday, June 23.
The FG vowed to destroy the estate after the incident.
The developers asked the court to prevent the respondents—the Minister of the FCT, the Federal Capital Development Authority, the Abuja Metropolitan Management Council, and the Abuja Municipal Area Council—from demolishing the property in the writ of summons submitted by Ozekhome, SAN, among other reliefs.
Additionally, the developers asked the court to halt the FG from evicting the residents of the estate, trespassing there in any way, or interfering with the plaintiff’s sole right to ownership and possession of the aforementioned estate.
Trademore Holding in the main suit complained to the court about earlier “illegal, wanton and unconscionable demolition of buildings belonging to innocent occupants in the estate by agents of the defendants.”
The plaintiff argued that “it was manifestly clear that the three floods ever experienced in the estate since it was built in 2007, were all caused by acts of gross negligence on the part of the defendants or through outright inaction by agents of the Federal Government, by refusing to implement any of the anti-flooding measures jointly devised and agreed upon at various meetings and through several correspondences by representatives of the Federal government and Trademore Holding International Ltd”.
In addition, the plaintiff claimed that there wouldn’t have been any flooding in the estate if the FG, acting through the Ecological Fund, hadn’t constructed a very narrow carnal rather than a wide bridge to allow free passage of water coming from a now-broken-down and abandoned dam that runs through several nearby settlements.
The plaintiff then asked the court for an order to maintain the status quo as well as an ex parte order of interim injunction preventing all defendants or their agents from entering or damaging the estate while the motion on notice for an interlocutory injunction was being heard and decided.
The Judge, Justice Zubairu Mohammed granted all the claimant’s injunctive reliefs against the FG.
He also granted the second prayer that “all parties maintain status quo, while the Motion on Notice and Writ of Summons be served on the Defendants forthwith”.
The Judge thereafter adjourned the motion on notice for hearing to September 22, 2023.
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