The Chairman of Universal Basic Education in Taraba, Mr. Yakubu Agbaizo raise alarm over community residents’ encroaching over government primary schools lands.
Speaking to journalists in an interactive session in Jalingo on Monday, the Chairman said land encroachment has become a major problem, people built on schools lands in Taraba sate without conscience.
Decrying the worrying situation he asserts that “Some of this schools lands where given way back in the 60s and 70s. Some of the encroachers discovered that their parents or great grand parents gave the lands to the government and concluded that the government most compensate them or they claim their ancestral land by cultivating it or building on it”.
“For example, there is a modern school in the Sabon gari area in Jalingo, when the contractor started the work, suddenly some people came and say it’s their land and they have to be compensated and UBEC doesn’t pay compensation so the project has been abandoned they frustrated the contractor out. That’s how it has been, in fact in some schools some people start building on the football field. It’s an issue that it has to stop because public schools needs space” Agbaizo said.
He further states that, if the community has decided to give large portion of land to the school, they expect that they custodians of the community should keep to their words. He further stated that to abate such menace, UBEC have engaged in capturing schools land and doing a proper land ownership documents to stop future occurrences.
