Key Points
- Rita Lori Ogbebor rejects plea to President Tinubu over land dispute.
- Paullosa Nigeria Limited faces demolition threat in Gwarimpa estate.
- Ogbebor highlights her late husband’s role in Abuja’s development.
The widow of the late Col. Paul Ogbebor, Mrs. Rita Lori Ogbebor, has stated that she would sooner die than ask President Bola Tinubu to step in and resolve a land dispute between the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) authorities and Paullosa Nigeria Limited, an estate management firm her late husband founded.
Rita Ogbebor rejects plea to President Tinubu over land row
Ogbebor said as much at a news conference in Abuja on Friday. She called it “belittling” to ask FCT Minister Nyesom Wike or the president for advice.
According to the PUNCH, a demolition notice sent to the estate on Plot 2241, Gwarimpa District, Lifecamp, Abuja, sparked complaints from the locals and Paullosa Nigeria Limited’s management.
Wike has insisted that demolition work in the FCT will go on in spite of public outcry, famously saying, “Let heaven fall.”
Speaking on the subject, Ogbebor highlighted the contributions her late husband made to the growth of Abuja and said that people close to the president had to acknowledge her efforts and draw his attention to it.
“The people and leaders who surround and advise the President should know people like us who grease the wheel of progress in this country,” she continued, without implying that the President should know me. “When there is a problem like this, they should intervene, and if it is above them, they should take it to the president.”
Ogbebor highlights late husband’s role in building Abuja
Ogbebor emphasized her husband’s contribution to Abuja’s growth, pointing out that he received a plot of land to help fund his engineering career. Officials now want to take the land and give it to a man named Chinda, she said, after 42 years.
Abuja was constructed in part by my spouse. They offered him a plot of land on which to practice engineering. He recruited employees from throughout the globe to collaborate with him.
They want to destroy it and give it to Chinda now, forty-two years later? Who is Chinda? She enquired.
She also questioned the people’s credibility. “Chinda was just 14 years old if you consider her age today and the time we have been here. Wike is as well. At eighty-four, is it not insulting for me to go to the president and tell him, “Mr. President, someone in my country is demolishing my house?” No. “I’d rather die,” she declared.
