Land Subscribers Protest, Accuse DSS Cooperative Of Fraud

Members of the public who claimed they subscribed to the land sales put up by the Department of State Services Cooperative Society in Ibadan on Tuesday staged a public protest over the allegation that the agency’s cooperative has defrauded them.

The aggrieved protesters started the protest in front of the new estate where they said the cooperative society promised to allocate land to them.

Although some bricklayers and labourers were seen working on the site at Ile Titun in Ido Local Government Area of Oyo State while the protest was going on, the gate leading to the site was firmly locked

From the place, the protesters moved to the DSS Head Office in Ibadan to continue the protest while demanding that they should be allocated the land which they paid for over two years ago without further delay.

Some of the leaders of the protesters were allowed inside where they submitted their protest letter.

The Vice President of the subscribers, Pastor Adebola Ibitoye, while briefing other subscribers after meeting with the DSS officials said she held a meeting with the Deputy Director Admin of the agency and he promised that the problem would be sorted out next week.

Ibitoye said when the DSS Cooperative put up the land up for sale, subscribers went to make inquiries from DSS office and they were asked to pay into the accounts of any of their two consultants which they did with evidence to back up her claims.

The protesters further took their protest to the Governor’s Office where they also submitted their protest letter for onward transmission to Governor Seyi Makinde.

The letter read, ” We wish to bring to your notice, a mega fraud being perpetrated here in Ibadan by some unscrupulous elements in connivance with the State Security Service Multipurpose Cooperative Society (hereinafter referred to as the DSS-Cooperative).

“Acting on the instruction of the DSS Cooperative, their agents gave assurances to members of the public that once payment is made, issuance of allocation letters will commence immediately afterwards, and they quoted amounts ranging between N3,650,000 and N5,000,000 per plot and gave their account numbers.

“Based on their assurances, about 87 unsuspecting Nigerians subscribed to the above scam and parted with their hard earned money by paying a total of four hundred and thirteen million, four hundred and sixty five thousand naira only (N413,465,000.00).

“Shortly after payments were made by unsuspecting Nigerians to the above accounts, developmental projects were seen to have commenced on the land preparatory to the allocation to subscribers.

“However, To the dismay of subscribers, the DSS-Cooperative did not issue any letter of allocation to any of the subscribers, as no one on the attached list has received so much as a phone call from them, much less an allocation letter.

“While awaiting a call from the DSS-Cooperative, we realize that houses have started springing up on the land and upon inquiry, we discovered that allocation letters have been issued but only to staff members of the DSS Cooperative, who have either started building on the land, or resold to 3rd parties.

“All efforts made to get a satisfactory explanation from the DSS-Cooperative have proved abortive, as nobody has been able to explain to us why the land developed with our money was not allocated to us but to their staff members.

“In view of the fact that by law, you are the administrator of any land within the geographical territory of Oyo state, coupled with the recognition of your effort to rid Oyo State of land grabbing and all forms of land related fraud, I and other subscribers call on you sir, to use all means known to law to protect the interest of these innocent Nigerians who relied on the integrity of a government institution to embark on the said transaction.”