By Ismaila Jimoh, Abuja
The Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Barr. Nyesom Wike has disclosed that the recently removed illegal structures within the River Park Estate has nothing to do with any plans by the Administration to take away anybody’s property, but rather to ensure owners do the right things.
Wike made this known to journalists on Saturday after touring parts of the estate where FCT Department of Development Control had carried out the removal exercise.
Explaining the peculiarity of the estate’s case, the Minister said, “I got a petition from SIMS senior advocate, lawyer to a company called Jonah AD, which I came to know is a Ghanaian company, and that company had a lease agreement with the FCT Administration, more than 20 years ago. Then from what we know, that company now had a power of attorney to a third party called Paulo Homes. Paulo Homes has no Business with the FCT. Let it be on record. Only the Ghanaian company has business with us.
“Unfortunately, that lease agreement had expired. Apart from that, entering into an agreement with a third party is a contravention of one of the clauses of the lease agreement. And what we agreed to do in order not to make a lot of Nigerians who may have inadvertently obtained and built houses, we decided that we will give them back C of O, to say that they were directly allocated land by the FCT Administration.
“So, all these cries that they (FCTA) want to take their property is neither here nor there. That is not the intention of the FCTA.”
He appealed to residents to do their due diligence before purchasing land from any third party and not be fooled into building structures in the estate.
“And we now said that since the lease has expired, no more development. What Paulo Homes did was to, overnight, start construction in order to tie the hands of the Administration, which, of course you know we will not succumb to such. So, we sent the Department of Development Control to come here and demolish every construction going on. And that we will continue to do,” the Minister stated.
He added: “I appeal to those who do not understand or could not have known, not to be fooled. Anybody who is doing anything here now is at his or her own risk. It will go down. No amount of blackmail will stop us. You know, people have always used government to make money. We are not stopping anybody from making money. We are saying do things the way it should be done.”
“You have come here, you have seen for yourself. It is a terrible thing, but all those who are here should be rest assured that nobody is going to collect their property, but we are going to issue them new C of O. All those C of O given to them through Paulo Homes, we have already voided them. So, we will reissue them with new C of O. We are going to invite residents who own property here next week, so that we tell them what we intend to do. So, there is no cause for alarm.” the Minister assured.
