At the centre of the Apo Resettlement District, on the fringe of the Abuja city centre, sits an imposing High Court building, distances away from a police station and a school.
With no hospital or market in this sprawling community developed for the indigenous people of Abuja, and inhabited by mainly low income Nigerians, the court, and the police post, and the school are about all of government’s presence in the District.
Daily, children cover long distances on foot to the crowded school, from some of Abuja’s most horribly designed homes, handed to the parents by the government as compensation for their lands confiscated since 1976, for the development of Nigeria’s sprawling capital city.
“You build court and police station to check people, but you don’t give them houses to live in,” said Gimba Gbaiza, the leader of Greater Gbayi Development Initiative, a group dedicated to the cause of Abuja natives, which has followed the three-decade old resettlement effort.
Now, a government plan to expand facilities in the area, provide markets, build a health facility and more schools for the three benefiting communities – Apo, Garki and Akpanjanya – has failed with assigned plots cornered by dubious government officials, who steal lands in an area exclusively reserved for the natives, the investigation has shown.
The schemes are well-known in the community, and often involve government staff transferring land and house titles to non-natives for money, shortchanging thousands of qualified indigenes. When allegations spring up, officials boldly shrug them off, and ask for evidence of wrongdoing, confident that full details of the ownership of titles have, and may, never become public.
For more than two months, three relevant government offices- Department of Resettlement and Compensation of the Federal Capital Development Administration (FCDA), the office of the Minister of FCT, and the Abuja Geographic Information Systems (AGIS)- rebuffed multiple Freedom of Information (FOI) requests by the media seeking those details.
But a recent government investigation, ordered by the Minister of State for FCT, Olajumoke Akinjide, found that dozens of lands meant for public infrastructures like schools, health centres, police posts, and recreational facilities for the resettlement district, were illegally sold by FCDA officials to non-natives, who convert them for private properties and businesses.
More
The report established cases of indigenes shortchanged during allocations, with their houses and land titles turning up in other hands, in a scam instigated by officials, often times, in connivance with the locals of Abuja.
“As big as the place is, it cannot contain the three communities. The reason is that after giving the lands, they (government officials) still share it among themselves,” Mr. Gbaiza said.
The stories are intriguing, and many of them defy effort at resolution. For example, Sunday Wanyidasa, an indigene of Apo, one of the communities with rights to a government home, was awarded a letter for House No. 3, Zone D, with Enumeration No. GK/05/2662. While he waited to complete formalities that would have seen him take possession of the property, the original copy of the allocation letter suddenly disappeared from government files, while others checked into their new apartments in 2009.
When he protested, the deputy director in the Department of Resettlement and Compensation, Helen Obiechina, assured him that a directive had been given for Mr. Wanyidasa to be issued another allocation for immediate check-in.
Without a response months on, he reached out to Jisanlo Zephaniah, the then departmental head, and Mrs. Obiechina’s superior, who informed him the allocation had been signed for, and collected by the “owner”. No official of the department, including Bayo Fahgbon, in charge of the allocations, however, agreed to divulge the identity of the “owner”.
When Mr. Wanyidasa gave a further chase, another official, Ogunmodede Tunde, admitted his title was never released since 2009, and again, assured of a resolution. But as the drama unfolded, Mr. Wanyidasa found out during a visit to the property, that an occupant, named Unde Ayo, had since checked in on a N160, 000 rental agreement shockingly “signed” by Mr. Wanyidasa.
Not only was Mr. Ayo’s claim to the property illegal, but as his name confirmed, he was a non-native and had no direct legitimacy in the resettlement area. Yet, he tendered a separate agreement transferring the tenancy to Ifeanyi Onuegbu, at N700, 000 for two years. That lease expired last May.
A scheme far too common, its implication was clear: with stringent procedure for claiming any allocated house, such can only be an inside job, struck by some officials, many residents and officials of the FCDA said.
READ MORE: http://news.naij.com/47101.html
READ MORE: http://news.naij.com/47101.html
No comments:
Post a Comment