The Housing Development Advocacy Network, a non governmental organization has called on the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCT) to declare a state of emergency on land racketeering in the FCT.
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the group, Barr Festus Adebayo, made this call yesterday during interview with Leadership correspondent in Abuja.
Adebayo noted that there is increasing level of land racketeering in FCT, adding that it is necessary to raise this alarm for the attention of those in charge of the administration before FCT will lose investors interest.
He said eventhough there are cases of fake/ political developers, and land racketeers but there are also genuine developers. There are genuine developers who want to put investment in FCT but at the end of the day they run into the hands of land racketeers.
“The master plan of FCT is in disarray, it requires surgical operation and the FCT minister must declare state of emergency on the FCT urban planning system. The system is no more going in line with those who saw the vision of the FCT.The master plan has been bastardized.
“Firstly, the number one problem with the planning of FCT is no detailed information on existing approved layouts;fake layouts ;over
Lapping layouts;that can enable investors know the right information that will save them
from falling victim of the fake layout.
“The unfortunate situation is when some bad eggs in government are supporting the business of those who are doing racketeering in destroying the fct master plan.
Today 70percent of cases in courts in fct are land related;that is why the real estate sector in FCT is facing danger and we cannot fold our arms and allow the sector to fail. Where there is no proper information about the existing layout the publics will continue to fall victims of sharp practices and that is why you are seeing demolition all the time in some areas . The minister has to declare to state of emergency before it is too late.
“We are calling on the government of the FCT to look into the areas where the planning system of the FCT has bèen abused,” he said.
According to him,most of the estates that are products of land racketeering are built in hurry and most of them dont have basic facilities requires of a decent estate.
He said further that it is time for the FCT administration to do two things, first, to create a platform for educating people on what they should know and what they should ask whenever they want to buy property in FCT.
He said, “We are asking the FCT to set up new department to be call urban renewal department that will saddle with the responsibility of redevelopment and upgrading, it will also identify areas of action and involves standard for sustainable action.
“We are also calling on the directors of the development control, the director of urban and regional planning, director of lands ;Director of AGIS to please come together and think out of the box on how to salvage urban planning system of system of fct that land ractecteers have destroyed.
