Imported User:
The Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) has been advised to redesign its mass housing programme to accommodate the real masses if issues of illegal land acquisition and illegal construction must be checked.
This was contained in a statement by Muhammed Sani of the Institute of Economic development, made available to LEADERSHIP in Abuja.
This was just as he said there was a need for the land allocation process in Abuja to be made less cumbersome and less expensive.
“The process of obtaining land from the FCT is cumbersome and very expensive. An applicant has to fill a form and pay a non-refundable fee of N100,000. This application is not automatic and mostly not forthcoming. The poor are the worst hit as there is no provision for them in the master plan of Abuja. Therefore, they have to resort to doing the illegality, buying land from the Gbagyi kings and indigenes,” he said.
Sani further observed that the 19 villages penciled down for demolition by the FCT administration were juicy areas because of their proximity to the city centre, “The non-indigenes prefer them and so also the FCT administration therefore it is a fight between the mighty rich and the poor.”
Speaking further, he stated that while the demolition plan was in order, considering the fact that the people occupying the land bought them illegally and had no titles to claim them, the FCT administration despite its enormous responsibilities ought to have stopped the non-indigenes from developing the land, noting that those whose houses were to be demolished would be rendered homeless.
“The way out of this rigmarole is for the FCT administration to be sincere and call a spade a spade. The FCT mass housing scheme should be redesigned to accommodate the real masses. The price of finished mass houses in the FCT ranges between N7million to N80million. N7million is out of the reach of a lot of people; even the civil servants cannot afford it.”
