The fire that engulfed the market under the Apogbon bridge in Lagos on March 23 was not a mysterious inferno, TrackNews has learnt.
A Lagos prince who was raised in the area and the Olori–Ekun of Olowogbowo, Lagos Island, Prince Uthman Shodipe-Dosunmu, has alleged that the market was set on fire to prevent operatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission from conducting official enumeration of the number of shops in the area.
There were over 20,000 traders under the Apongbon/Eko bridge selling shoes, bakery items, and others, with thousands of containers.
The expanse of land which was converted to market was leased to the Lagos prince by the Federal Ministry of Works in 2013, but he used a company that didn’t belong to him- Corporate Building Nigeria Limited owned by one Dapo Alli Balogun- to get the official approval.
Prince Uthman Shodipe-Dosunmu
According to a petition sent to the EFCC, a copy of which is in possession of TrackNews, Shodipe-Dosunmu accused Alli-Balogun of illegally converting the lease to a market where he allegedly installed 3,000 containers of his own and rented out the remaining space to others since 2013. The conversion is said to be worth one billion, three hundred and forty-nine million, six hundred and eighty thousand. (N1, 349,680:00).
Trouble started when Shodipe-Dosunmu demanded the 40 percent payment agreed for the lease. Alli-Balogun allegedly ignored the demand until the former fired a petition to the EFCC on September 29, last year.
“Since 2013, I only got one million naira. This guy has about 3,000 containers under that bridge collecting N800,000 per container per year and takes 2 to 3 years rent.
“We wrote to EFCC on September 29, 2021, to report what is happening. The chairman approved it and gave the case to a department called the CTIG. He gave them three months to finish the case. Hafeez Mustapha is the sectional head. The investigation officer is Musa Imran,” Shodipe-Dosunmu told TrackNews in a telephone conversation.
After investigations, the EFCC confirmed that Alli-Balogun has been collecting money on the leased, and had collected a total of N1.3 billion as at September 2021. However, Alli-Balogun lied that he only started collecting money from 2019 and not 2013 as alleged.
To confirm the veracity of his claim, Shodipe-Dosunmu and the EFCC team agreed on the need to do a proper enumeration of the shops under the bridge and the traders paying to Alli-Balogun on March 22.
But someone allegedly set fire to the market the following day when enumeration was expected to commence. The fire broke out early in the morning before traders started to arrive.
“When they decided to do proper enumeration under the bridge, the next day the place was on fire. He did not want them to count the number of lockup shops there,” Shodipe-Dosunmu, also a veteran journalist, told this website.
But Shodipe-Dosunmu is also alleging that the head of the section conducting the investigation, Hafeez Mustapha, has been compromised by Alli-Balogun to frustrate the case.
Mustapha dismissed the allegation of connivance when he spoke to our correspondent. He said Shodipe-Dosunmu has a good case but has shown impatience.
He said, “It’s rather unfortunate. If you have an issue with the way your case is being handled, there are official channels to complain. I have nothing to hide. The man is just a difficult person. We’re professionals here at EFCC, somebody cannot be micro-managing our investigations.
“What he does not even know is that we have an interim investigation report and everything is in his favour. We have recovered millions of naira for him and our report shows that the suspect is indicted. The report will go to our legal department for prosecution.
“The problem is that he does not come to us and does not know how far we’ve gone with our case.”
