Drama ensued on Monday at the site of an ongoing Housing Estate project in Ondo State following the invasion of the site by traditional worshippers.
Tension was said to have engulfed the site of the project situated along Igbatoro road, Akure, the state capital after the workers on the site scampered to safety.
The worshippers who were 21 in number were said to have maintained that their presence on the site located opposite the state police headquarters was necessitated due to an annual ritual required to be performed on the site.
The worshippers who stormed the estate with black fowl, white pigeon and other objects to perform the purported ritual were led by Chief Abisoye Adigun Asoga of Akureland.
Following the development, the worshippers were invited to the police headquarters after the developers of the federal housing estate, and its Managing Director, Otunba Ademola Akin-Benson, sought the intervention of the police.
Speaking at the police headquarters, Otunba Akin-Benson, alleged that the worshippers were being sponsored by land grabbers to use the ritual at the site to scare away the federal housing estate developer and site workers as he insisted that the land had been legally acquired by the federal government for the estate.
According to Akin-Benson, thugs and ritualists had in the past attacked site workers at the estate, which made him to approach the court and the court had ordered all parties including the Deji of Akure, Oba Ogunlade Aladetoyinbo, to maintain status quo and allow the project to continue.
On his part, the leader of the worshippers, Chief Adigun said contrary to allegations of land grabbing, it was the tradition of Akure to perform the ritual at a small rock inside the estate, at least once in ten years.
In a petition signed by the developers’ lawyer, Femi Emodamori and addressed to the state Commissioner of Police, the Deji of Akure, Oba Ogunlade Aladetoyinbo was fingered for allegedly sponsoring the ritualists.
Mr Emodamori described the invasion of the federal estate site as traditional hooliganism.
Reacting, the Deji of Akure, Oba Ogunlade Aladetoyinbo who described the allegation by the developer as false, stated that the site belongs to Akure traditional worshippers.
The monarch who spoke through his Chief Press Secretary, Michael Adeyeye, maintained that the ritual at the estate site was in line with the Akure’s tradition.
