ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

By Emmanuel Agaji

This is the continuation of FCT, minister Nyesom Wike’s October monthly media chat, in this version, he spoke mainly on developmental projects, multiple taxations in the Territory, green areas, Abuja Masterplan, Jabi Lake, Abuja varsity and other issues, excerpts.

What are you doing about Lugbe especially the road to Abuja Technology Village, from Lugbe to Pyakasa Road, that vast empty land.

I’m so happy that you are concerned because of what’s going on. Everybody wants to have a bit of the cake. But just be patient. It’s like when I said when Peter Obi went to one school and then he came out on television and said, oh, public schools are not given the attention. As if, you’ve gone to all the schools.

Whether you like it or not, even if you give us 10 years, we can’t solve all the problems at the same time. Some other persons have to also come, continue where we have stopped.

So, what is important? Are there projects going on? If I tell you the letters people write, oh, please, sir, I know that your attention has not been caught up on so, so. Please, sir, we want you to come to this place, which means people appreciate that something is going on. But have patience. When will you reach us?

Minister, a couple of months ago, you had laid out some reforms concerning the administration of estate lands within the FCT. You had done some reforms a couple of months ago. Now, it appears that there has been little to no action within that area. Do you care to let the citizens, because there has been news going round that the Minister came into power and he has indeed disrupted the system and is taking over lands. Do you care to speak on that because there are allegations flying all around?

One of the problems we had, which was very bad, before now, the real Parks and Gardens, we are allocating lands to people. And then, what is the agreement?
Somebody takes the land for the past 15 years for Parks and Gardens. And then, the next thing you see application for conversion, for comprehensive development.
And government said, no, this is not what we expect. And we cannot allow that. And therefore, there was a ministerial committee that was set up to say look, I think we have to control this. No more land to any department.

If you want to deal with Real Estate, apply to the lands department, which will bring the application to the attention of the Minister. If you want to carry out Parks and Gardens, apply. And then, it will come to the attention of the Minister of the FCT.

It is now that you ask people to say, oh, the Minister has come to carry our land. Which is your land? Show me the document that the land belongs to you.

Remember before now, there was this problem between us, Sunrise and Parco and the FCT. And when we said, how can you, under what law are you taking over this land?
But we thank God today, the two warring parties, Sunrise and Parco, have been able to resolve. And we have settled that out and we are now giving them new title to that. So that has been settled.
You’ve heard about the River Park. There’s no business with FCT and the River Park. There’s no business.

How is that so Minister?

Well, that is going on for settlement, it is not to carry blackmail. The moment you want to do the right thing, blackmail comes in. And for us, we’re not going to be distracted by this kind of blackmail.

Ask River Park Estates, does it have any business with FCT? No. He is just a third party who signed an agreement with those that have agreement with the FCT.

Unfortunately that lease agreement has expired by execution of time.
So the fight ought to be between River Park and that company. And then we went on to give…it is unfortunate the day I went there, we said look we are not taking anything from anybody, what we are doing is to protect you by giving you a different title, a new title, to show that you are the owner of this property.

But saying that River Park owns that place, no, it’s not correct. That is government land. And government said, look, in order to protect these people whom you have sold to, they are all Nigerians, I would not want to put them in that kind of difficulty where they would lose, ordinarily, there’s no business between River Park and the FCT.

But we have to protect them. We said okay, what we will do is to give them the title that says they own this area. The other side has not been developed, please, stop, you have no business with the FCT.

And somebody comes and carries out propaganda, oh, the Minister is taking the land, taking the land to do, the right thing must be done. And when you are doing that, you see all kinds of blackmail, they will go on paper, oh, and saying this and that. That will not affect us. That will not deter us. The right thing must be done.

Are discussions going on between the administration and the owners of River Park?

You see, one thing, they go to court. The next thing, they send people to come to the park. And what you have, well, let us go to court. I’ll hold it down before you will leave office. It’s not our business.

So no discussion is going on because of the court case?

As far as we are concerned, you have already gone to court, we will continue to do the right thing. We’ll obey whatever is the court order. But there’s no court order, stopping them from doing the right thing.

If we move a little bit away from that and look at the issues of, the projects that are ongoing right now. You just excitedly spoke about 20 days of commissioning and flag off. In terms of figures and numbers of youths and Nigerians who will be engaged in all these activities, can we have some kind of estimate because naturally with this quantum of projects, definitely some Nigerians are off the streets?

If you take one project and see the number of people involved as far as employment is concerned, it’s huge. So if you say 20 projects, either be it provision of water in the satellite town, either be it in terms of road construction, you are thinking of not less than 2,000 youths being engaged.

That is direct, not even the indirect and that’s going on.
So you can see the employment generation that that has created. You see the people also who are not working directly, who will be supplying other things to the various contractors. So it’s quite huge.

Honourable Minister, and I must really commend you for that because in my hometown of Karu, for example, we are given several projects, and I know that some youths have been engaged of recent by the contractors. But I want to ask, Honourable Minister, do you have a tourism master plan for Abuja? Because people say Abuja is soulless. You come inside the city, no arts, nothing. It just looks, in the dead of the night, it just looks somehow. And then secondly, sir, Abuja has one of the best sewage system, drainage system. But of recent, people have been complaining that the drainage system have been having problems whenever it rains. Sometimes people’s cars get quenched in the middle of the day. What is Abuja Environmental Protection Board doing?

Because you talk about blockage and the rest of it. And of course, that’s why we’re also saying that people must not build on the drainage system.

I’m sure when you see the Development Control bringing down houses, you begin to wonder, why they’re doing this, people are suffering. Just look at what happened recently. I went by myself to see the houses being built by the police.
We are building roads that will lead to Lokogoma and it is under the high tension. And the Development Control said we don’t give you approval to do this.

So when they went there, they were arrested. And I called the IG. I said, look, this is not acceptable. And I went there myself and I complained to the IG. And the IG said, look, we are going to look into it. But I said, this property must go down and we have to bring them down. I went there myself.
In fact, there was one now in Gaduwa where they say a former Chief of Naval Staff was given for Parks and Gardens, for how many years? And I’m going to go there today after the FCT Executive Committee meeting. I’m going to go there by myself and see things for myself, we can’t allow this to continue.

Simply because you occupied this position before and then you just take government land. For how many years would you say that was given to you? Over 15 years and nothing has happened? And now government said, no, we can’t allow this. Government has taken back their property.

Is that the same reason why they took over plots of Abuja…

I think you have to correct this impression when you say the same reason. First of all, I have told you, in 2018, the government then revoked this and said, you cannot own 11,000 hectares of land. It did not start under this…The EFCC is there. The State Security is there. And we have given them about 4,000 hectares. Look at the politics, it’s unfortunate.

What you gave them is mostly hilly areas.

People are looking for such hilly areas. I was watching the former ASUU President. We cannot continue with this kind of blackmail. Now putting it as a condition where we will call off the strike. Was it part of the demand? Was it part of the conditions you gave to government?
Now we have said, and look at what he said. Why is government not taking the one of the… is it how we will continue? Is that how the country will be? When you want to do the right thing somebody comes with all kinds of threats.

You have not answered my question whether there is a tourism master plan for Abuja.

I am coming, why not wait. You asked for tourism, for sewage, you asked this. I would have been able to answer the one of sewage and say what Development Control is doing. We have to be patient that this thing has to be taken one by one.

Remember last time you talked about education. And I told you that we are going to go into education. And I said, look. For now, we have taken a break. Ordinarily, we would have gone into what we are doing in education. I said when we come back, after the break we have taken you will see what we are doing in education. Just take it easy.
Remember you also asked last time about the health sector. I said, look. We will take this thing one by one. And by the time we come back from our break, you will see what we are doing in the health sector, education. So just relax. Everybody wants to have a bite of the cake.

If I may, there is this issue about the green areas. We have been hearing conversations around how a lot of people have converted those spaces. Either they have converted them or they are not being used for what they had said they were going to use it for. But only very recently, a group of women had reason to complain because according to them, their own space, they have applied it to what exactly they were given that space for and they had cause to complain. They said even after they had been called for verification, it was not yet their turn when their place was demolished. That they had been operating that area for the last 14 years, they had visuals to show what it was like when it was in operation. And that one day they just woke up and their place had been demolished. And they are not owing ground rent, they paid their ground rent in April.

First of all, you can’t pay ground rent when the property is not yours.

But they paid.

Hold on, hold on. You pay ground rent when you have a Certificate of Occupancy. How can you pay ground rent when you don’t have a Certificate of Occupancy?

Does it mean some officials in FCT administration have been collecting it?

Some of these things are not correct. I know people trying to bring in emotion which we accept, oh yes, people are shouting. Let them proof that look at our C of O and we are paying. There is a difference between a statutory Right of Occupancy and Certificate of Occupancy.

But if that place doesn’t contradict urban development, why not encourage them to keep that kind of place and regularize it?

What are they really doing?

It was adding to employment and all of that.

I have told you here what they had with the Parks and Gardens go to lease for so many number of years and government have come up with a policy, that no, this cannot continue this way. It is the property of the FCT, now this is what we want to do. And for Christ sake and said look this is the new policy and you have to follow the rules.

Honourable Minister but shouldn’t their years of investment had been considered, this women said they started about 14 years ago. I am not trying to emotionally blackmail you.

The issue is not women and this is what I will not take. The point we have taken whether you are women, whether you are men, this is the policy of government and that you have to follow according to the rules. So this spinning it about women, I will not agree to that.

Shouldn’t the rules be bent a little bit to accommodate the years of labour that they have put in whether they are women or not. And again, the allegation is that now that you have revoked it and trees were even…

It’s not about revoking. You don’t even have a title before you talk about revocation.

But the people who are coming back there are going to be doing pretty the same thing that they were doing in that place.

That is not correct. The point we are making is that we always attach emotions to all these things which is not right. What I am trying to say is that what was it before? And what is the policy of government now?

The policy of government says, look, we have taken back all these lease agreements you had with departments. Some people say, if you go to Wupa, you can’t believe what has happened.

People have now come to say they are building Real Estate. Come on, how? These are the things they shout and say, oh, we had an agreement with the Abuja Environmental Protection Agency, no. Since last year, it is the policy of government that, look, we have to take back our land and that is what is going on.

I am not particularly against anybody. But you have to follow the rules. And that is it whether you are a woman, whether you are a man, it is not our business. Our business is follow the laid down rules so that everything will go on well.

Minister, I have two concerns, particularly concerning the tourism sector. Inasmuch as the FCT administration is doing a lot of work in ensuring that the FCT is kept clean, one particular spot that has been neglected for a lot of years is the Jabi Lake. And with the number of developments springing up around there, the water is dirty.

The smell there is very pungent. Is there anything your administration is going to do regarding that? That is one. Then secondly, on the issue of manhole covers that were recovered from thieves who had stolen them and sold to scrap metal dealers. Up until now, we have not seen proper replacement of those stolen manhole covers in certain parts of the city, particularly the Central Business District. Is there anything your administration is doing regarding those replacements?

It is not correct. We have been replacing the manholes. It is our property.

But there are still empty manhole covers.

Obviously, you will say that all these have not been completed. But something is going on. So it is the truth, something is going on.
The point you are making is that people expect that within so-so time, you would have completed it. I was telling you be patient. Today you put this manhole back, tomorrow you see people going to destroy them, to go and sell them. It will take time. But I know that at the end of the day, we will sort it out.

About the Jabi Lake, is there a plan to turn it to a tourism destination?

Of course something is going on. Just like you said, how do we develop the Jabi Lake? Go and see what is going on there, it is a mess. But we are taking on the policy that says look, we have to re-dredge the place and clean it up.
People have come to say, look, we are interested as a tourist attraction. But we have also said, look, it is not what you do overnight.

By the time we clean up that water and turn it into a tourist attraction, it will attract a lot of people and investors to come in.
But the point is that first thing first, everybody wants you to develop all the sectors at the same time, which is not going to be possible. But we are doing something that, like now we are talking about this, that cleaning up the Jabi Lake, by the time we finish that, you will see how Jabi Lake have become a tourist attraction. Just take it easy.

Talking about Jabi Lake and other green areas and all that, the need for ecological balance in terms of some of these approvals, what is right under the law is one, but in terms of the environment, is there careful considerations that have been given to even some of these allocations and the places where they are felling trees and all that, to maintain that ecological balance and city freshness that the green areas stand for?

Well, you see, again, as a population is coming in and people are moving in and then talking about the tourist attraction, the green areas, which will distort the Abuja Master Plan, we are taking it gradually. So, there is a deliberate policy in terms of tourism. But like we said, everybody should be patient and see what we are coming up with.

What is delaying the take-up of the Abuja University of Science and Technology in Abaji? And then secondly, there have been complaints of multiple taxation within the city centre by different tax groups and then outdoor advertising groups and some of these people harassing a whole lot of people. What is the relationship between the FCT administration and local governments in terms of these taxations to curtail all these issues of multiple taxations?

You have heard us say severally that look, we are not going to allow the issue of multiple taxations, this has to be harmonised, right? And that’s why we are saying, look, area councils, you cannot have multiple taxations.

And we are working very hard with them, and talking about allowing the business to thrive, the ease of doing business. And I think to a greater extent, we have tried to reduce it because nobody knows what taxes they are going to pay and that is not helping us. It affects the ease of doing business.
But as it is today, we are trying to ease it off, we are trying to create an enabling environment, so that everybody will know, this is what you are supposed to pay, where you are going to pay, whose responsibility it is.

What about the Abuja University of Science and Technology.

Have you been there? Have you seen what is going on? Look at what is going on we are building projects, hostels, and other things that would make it look like a university.

You see, when you don’t have a master plan, people just come up and just go in and do whatever they want to do. It’s our intention. If you go to Abaji today, we have created the roads, go and see what we are doing. It will take time.
In fact, as at two days ago, I was working on the files, where projects have been awarded, so that this thing can take off. It’s not going to be easy, but we are doing everything we can to see that these things are done.

The university was sponsored by your friend, Senator Adudua while he was in the Senate.

It has nothing to do with friendship. It has to do with the policy of government, that this is a deliberate policy to see that, the people of Abaji want this university to take place, and I think that will happen.