I ll Demolish 36 More Estates In Abuja..FCT Minister

The Minister of the Federal Capital Territory,Bala Mohammed yesterday told a Senate committee looking into the budget of the territory for 2013 that against all odds,he will go ahead to demolish 36 housing Estates under construction in the territory.

When asked by the Chairman Senate committee for the FCT,Senator Smart Adeyemi Adeyemi who stated thus “We have received petitions from the general public and even some lawmakers which confirms that you have concluded plans of still going ahead to demolish about 36 estates in FCT that are at various stages of completion without moral ground?”

Underscoring his foreclosed plans of going ahead with the demolition plans, the minister in his reply, said all arrangements on the demolition of the remaining 36 estates spread across the territory will be carried out soonest, adding that  the Federal Capital Development Agency (FCDA) had a law which is embedded in the Abuja master plan which cannot be compromised.

“I have a law for demolishing; definitely I will go ahead and demolish these ongoing 36 estates that are illegally acquired in the first place.

“I must say with all humility and at the risk of sounding immodest that there are a lot of practices of impunity prevalent in our city where people take it for granted. Some of these excuses are that we have not given them notice.

“In most cases we have told the developers, don’t do it, it is not your plot, yet they will go ahead and develop and they have not even obtain development control approval and yet they would go ahead and develop and you expect us to leave them to practice that impunity thinking that they will go through the corrupt system and get it demoralised. We are not going to allow this to go on with impunity,” he said.

According to him, the issue at stake is not about morality, adding that Federal Government has in the last 35 years invested more than N4 trillion into FCT with social infrastructure and therefore would not allowed to go down the drain because of impunity on the part of developers who do not have approvals before constructing their estates.
Senator Domingo Obende, while urging the minister to take another look at the implication of the demolition considering the huge investment in the sector, added, the idea of allowing building to attain over 90 per cent completion was beyond legal issues.

Responding, the minister stressed: “However, we are in court. We don’t want to preempt the outcome of the court, but certainly we will not allow the huge investments made by the Federal Government in the last 35 years to the tune of N4 trillion to just go down the drain and to be destroyed by just few individuals who are using the media and agents of offices of government to blackmail us. We are not doing it for ourselves, we are doing it out of out own corporate social responsibilities.”

The minister explained that Development Control, which is the agency in charge, does not have enforcement power as the demolition is always done under the supervision of police and the military.

He said: “Development Control is just a government. We don’t have power of enforcement we use the police and sometime we use the military, but people don’t understand.

“And I want to plead with you because we don’t have laws in FCT as obtained in other cities or states and that is why we are having problems and the absence of these laws is really mitigating FCT’s capacity to implement some enforcements.”

Mohammed, however added that the authority was also making an alternative arrangement to build social houses with facilities that will be given to the displaced residents, adding that the enumeration of those involved have been concluded.

He said that it has become expedient to demolish the Mpape illegal residential areas also because the place is fast becoming a zone for security risk.