Posted by By Abayomi Adesida on
THE Asokoro, Abuja homes of the immediate past Senate President, Chief Pius Anyim and the current Senate Deputy Leader, Dr. Jonathan Zwingina, marked for demolition by the Ministry of Federal Capital Territory are now to be spared. This is because they have been granted the right of first refusal to purchase the houses marked for demolition for allegedly contravening the Abuja master plan. Several houses have already been demolished to enforce the master plan.
THE Asokoro, Abuja homes of the immediate past Senate President, Chief Pius Anyim and the current Senate Deputy Leader, Dr. Jonathan Zwingina, marked for demolition by the Ministry of Federal Capital Territory are now to be spared. This is because they have been granted the right of first refusal to purchase the houses marked for demolition for allegedly contravening the Abuja master plan. Several houses have already been demolished to enforce the master plan.
The new modalities for land allocation in Abuja were approved at Wednesday's meeting of the Federal Executive Council. The FCT Minister, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, told reporters at the end of the meeting that government, after viewing the various options opened to it, took the decision to make owners of such buildings pay to government because, 'some of them were actually duped to get the land."
Mallam el-Rufai said since some innocent people were offered plots of land in areas that were not opened officially by the Lands Department of the MFCT, government decided that 'whoever has a house on a plot of land that he got by that system with no title will have to pay the government.
'Such people will actually have to pack out for a few days, and our officials will value the property and the original owner will be offered a right of first refusal to pay and own the house, and if he turns down the offer, whoever can afford it would be offered the building," the minister said.
He said this decision did not apply only to the highbrow parts of the capital city but it would be the norm across the FCT.
Giving an example of the Hamza Abdullahi Farms encroached upon by over 200 developers in Kubwa, he said: 'We recommended to the council and what was approved was the option that we seize that land and the buildings on it, value them and offer them to the initial owners for purchase. In a situation where they can not pay the value, we are to put them up for auction and give the eventual buyers the title."