Residents of the Kofare/Dundere community in Yola South Local Government Area of Adamawa State whose buildings have either been demolished or marked for demolition for an ongoing stadium project have demanded compensation from the state Government.

A total of 166 houses and other landed properties are to give way for the Yola International Stadium complex currently being built by the government.

Chairman of the Kofare/Dundere Community, Mohammed Abdullahi Suleiman, in an interaction with newsmen in Yola, appealed to the government to compensate all affected parties.

Suleiman said the landlords followed due process in acquiring their respective plots, adding that some of them have occupied their respective houses for as long as 15 years before the current administration shocked them with quit order.

According to him, although the decision by the government to complete the long abandoned stadium project is welcome, the decision is costing the community its peace.

Suleiman urged Governor Ahmadu Fintiri to address the matter with human face, adding that even if building on the controversial stadium land was a mistake, they do not deserve the harsh decision from a government they brought to power.

On their own, Governor Fintiri and officials of his administration have often claimed that the landlords acquired the lands for the affected properties illegally and encroached on the land earmarked for the stadium.

The government has frequently claimed to have told the affected inhabitants on several ocasions of government’s intention to retrieve all areas encroached by the people.

The government officials, blaming the people for perceivably thinking that the matter is not serious and ignoring orders for them to quit, rolled out bulldozers last month and began the demolision exercise.

Daily Post reports that the plan for the stadium project was initiated in 1986 when Senator David Jang, that time a military man, was the administrator of what was then Gongola State, now Adamawa.

The project got stalled till the coming of Murtala Nyako who himself did not complete it before leaving power abruptly in 2014.

Fintiri, determined to finish it, has taken it to about 90 percent, extending to parts of the land for the project that previous administrations did not reach and therefore did not consider the drastic decision to force out the ‘encroaching’ private occupiers.