There is agitation amongst civil servants occupying government quarters in the Old Government Residential Area of Rivers State as the government has allegedly given them one month to quit their residences.
This is even as a group known as People’s Right Protection Initiative has accused the State Governor, Nyesom Wike of planning to allocate the properties to powerful politicians in the state.
It was learnt that the notice to quit was handed out to the occupants verbally by the Head of Service.
PHSpectator gathered the issue of eviction has lingered for over a year now with the government claiming that occupants of the areas were retirees who have refused to park out after service.
But, some occupants of the area who refused their names in print said it was not true that they are retirees. They insisted that most of them are actively in service of the state government and wondered why they should be treated with so much disdain.
They particularly complained that the one month notice to quit was too harsh.
Convener of Peoples Right Protection Initiative, Chris Finebone in a statement said the eviction is had long been suspected.
The statement reads:
“With 22 months to the end of its lifespan, the Wike administration has revived its plan to eject civil servants from government buildings and quarters in the Government Reserved Areas (GRAs) to pave way to sharing those buildings amongst the administration’s top politicians.
What many had long suspected became reality when last week the government through the Head of Service, Mr. Godwin Rufus summoned top civil servants and verbally handed down the directive for those occupying government quarters in the reserved areas to prepare to quit such quarters. Fearing that the plot will receive harsh response by the civil servants and the public, Mr. Rufus decided to hand down the directive verbally instead of doing so through the usual government memo.
It would be recalled that about two years ago, the Wike government had activated the process of quitting civil servants from government quarters in the GRAs but backed down in the face of massive resistance from the civil servants and the public. It is believed that the present attempt is expected to be prosecuted to its logical conclusion since the politicians have become desperate to share those properties as the administration winds down in office.
Another angle to the saga is that the re-allocation of those buildings are to take certain predetermined ethnic line in view of the raging argument of the true ownership of Port Harcourt. It is rumoured that Certificate of Occupancy (C of O) will be hurriedly issued to their new owners who have already been shortlisted to reflect the preferred ethnic group.
At this point, the reasonable thing to do is for the civil servants presently occupying such property to resist the directive and the attempt to eject them with every opportunity availed by law. Such insidious apartheid style ejections in this 21st Century must be resisted by the occupiers”.
