I have watched this story for months with a kind of increasing alarm that turns the chest tight, because what began as a dispute over land has been transformed into a public spectacle of violence, manipulation and institutional cowardice. On Wednesday, I sat in that courtroom and watched a system that should protect the weak attempt to eat one of its own alive. This is what the people of Ondo must know, feel and act on now.
Ojo Ajisafe is not a political firebrand. He is a bricklayer who inherited the soil his family has farmed for generations. When his father grew ill and later died under circumstances the family calls mysterious, a man named Fredrick Akinnuoye, known to some as Adaja, had earlier moved in as caregiver, produced a power of attorney, and began to behave as if he had become the owner. Ojo and his siblings were young and raw from grief, but they fought back. Four separate court judgments confirm what every honest neighbour knows, that the land belongs to the Ajisafe family.
At first there was help. Honourable Akinlaja showed the face of a patron. He introduced Ojo to Barrister Femi Akinbinu and paid part of the legal fees. He bought Ojo a motorcycle and sent him money, on record. For a moment Ojo had an ally. Then Ojo refused to sell 180 acres for ₦8,000,000 which at the time was a derisory offer compared with the market value. That simple act of refusing to be sleazed is what broke the arrangement and what pushed the whole affair into darkness.
What followed was not lawyering. It was harassment, fabrication and violence. Ojo was arrested repeatedly on spurious charges. He was detained and humiliated. One day ASP Christy Bolaji and men acting for the other side forced him out of his home, on yet another spurious charges, manacled him, first to his back, and then to the grounds, they then jumped on both chained hands. The pain was so excruciating, he defecated on himself. He spent the next days in custody until Barrister Akinbinu stepped in and forced the matter into court, where the family eventually won heavy costs that remained unpaid. That episode alone should have shamed anyone who pretends to love justice.
When the courts later verified Ojo’s judgments, Commissioner of Police, Wale Lawal intervened with an official report that should have put this to rest. Instead some men doubled down. Men who crave land and influence began to use other instruments. They used cultists. They used propaganda. They used the press. They used the courts themselves as tools of confusion.
The police affidavits are plain and chilling. They name Idowu Fadayomi, called Madman, as a confessed grand patron of the Ave confraternity, an admitted wielder of firearms and a man who according to witnesses and confessions runs the WhatsApp channel that mobilises foot soldiers to targets. Madman admitted in statements to the police that he participated in killings. He was arrested with others, yet he walked out of detention while his alleged co conspirators remained in Olokuta. Within days of his release he is said to have nearly plucked out a man’s eye in a new attack, a near fatal maiming that the victim survived by luck alone. The pattern here is not accidental. The pattern is protection. The pattern is the political shielding of violence.
Akinnuoye has not acted alone. He has boasted of high powered backers. Posters from the AG’s press secretary, Mr Olaoluwa Meshack, declaring him the owner of the disputed land appeared on the property, signed by the same Meshack, for which we must all demand explanation, and jingles ran on Eki FM until lawyers forced the station to pull them down. Mr Meshack, basking in a euphoria and machinery of influence handed Akinnuoye a microphone and a public stage and told him he could declare title by press release. That is not sloppy governance. It is deliberate propaganda, targeted, in his overzealousness to usurp the functions of the courts as the only institution of the constitution, vested with powers to declare title to land ownership.
Then came the chieftaincy angle which makes everything darker. Control of land is not only about cash. It is about who gets to distribute titles, who controls access to community benefit, who sits at the intersection of tradition and commerce. When a set of actors starts pushing chieftaincy installations and issuing unauthorized titles, when a local monarch is encouraged to confer insignia that the governor of his state had warned against, the land dispute becomes a means of grabbing long term power. The chieftaincy mischief explains the sudden intensity, the willingness to use cult violence, and the eagerness to corrupt administrative channels.
Which brings us to what I witnessed on Wednesday. A bail application was served into the DPP office on October 28, 2025 at 11:45 a.m., a routine act done by a court bailiff. The receiving officer, Mrs Alana had recorded the service and generated proof. Then the file vanished. The officer who should have had it was later told no such process was received. When she stood in court on Wednesday, a pitiable sight to behold, she held a process different from what the Judge had. She was visibly stunned. She had been set up. She had been intentionally deprived of the document she needed to represent the state in that hearing. The result was predictable. The hearing proceeded without proper contest because the state’s counsel was starved of time and evidence. That was not incompetence. That was manipulation timed and executed by people who understand how to use bureaucracy for cover and failure.
For the public, please hear this. This is forum shopping of the worst sort. Parallel suits were filed to create the fog while the decisive document is hidden from the officer who must defend the state. One case was left sitting in Akure unassigned while another moved forward and the DPP was busy chasing a phantom. The intention is obvious. Confuse, delay and then blame any human rights advocate, fighting for the voiceless in our society, who dares to say that this is injustice, and that it must not stand.
Even in this squalor there are beacons. I commend the Attorney General for the reputation he has maintained. I commend the Judge for the firmness he showed. Bail is at the discretion of the judge, and attempted murder is a bailable offense. I commend Commissioner Wale Lawal for doing the verification, which is the root cause of the community mayhem, and which the system should have done earlier. I commend His Majesty Oba Kiladejo for his public stance against cultism and lawlessness in the kingdom. Those men and institutions matter, and their work is the thin thread that keeps society from unravelling.
However, we enjoin the Attorney General, not to shy away from his duty, and urgently do what his office demands and order an independent, fully public inquiry into how court processes were intercepted, who authorised the posters of Mr Meshack and put to rest once and for all, whether Mr Meshack has such powers over land titles and ownership as to know who a land grabber and a land owner is. and whether Mr Meshack is complicit in the ordering of the jingles ran on Eki FM for several days, and why a confessed cult grand patron remains free while alleged accomplices rot in custody. The Inspector General of Police must look again at those files and ensure that no one is above criminality because they enjoy political patronage. The Governor must personally review the chieftaincy instruments that fed this land grabbing network and ensure the status quo is restored where the law requires it.
To the people of Ondo I speak plainly. This is not merely Ojo Ajisafe’s private tragedy. It is your civic emergency. When a common bricklayer can be branded a land grabber on the radio while men with forged influence sell his land in the open, the next victim may be your neighbour, your uncle or your child. The price of silence is not only the loss of one hectare of land. The price is the erosion of every right the constitution guarantees.
I have seen Ojo in court. I have seen his stitched head. I have seen the documents that confirm his family’s claim. I have seen the patterns that reveal an organised campaign to dispossess him through violence, procedure and propaganda. The law is not a cosmetic. It is not a costume you put on when audiences are watching. It is a covenant that binds the powerful and protects the powerless. When the covenant is broken we all lose.
So I call on every citizen who values fairness to raise their voices. Demand the public inquiry. Demand that media houses be held to account when they air inflammatory lies about legal disputes. Demand that the Attorney General and the Police clean out the rot around them. Demand that chieftaincy pronouncements be returned to the true custodians of tradition and not used as instruments of theft.
Ojo Ajisafe wants nothing more than that which belongs to his family. He does not want fame. He wants justice. Let us be the noise that his enemies cannot ignore. Let us be the conscience that forces institutions back to their duty. Let us be the small army that refuses to let land thieves and their high valued backers, some with stolen Ojo’s inheritance, turn inheritance into loot.
If you believe in Ondo, if you believe in law, if you believe in the dignity of the poor, stand up now. Do not allow this to become another story we file under tragedy and forget. The time to act is not tomorrow. It is this very moment. It is now…
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