The Abuja Metropolitan Management Council (AMMC) of the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) has begun a crackdown on developers who are encroaching on green areas in Abuja.
The authority said if urgent actions were not taken, it would worsen the already distorted master plan of the nation’s capital.
It would be recalled that Weekend Trust had a few weeks ago carried out an investigation on how the green areas in the nation’s capital have been under threat with many being converted to other uses.
On Monday, the Administration began a total clamp down on the encroachers of those areas.
The AMMC officers nabbed one of the estate developers for allegedly encroaching and converting waterways and green areas and selling the same to unsuspecting subscribers.
The Coordinator of the AMMC, Chief Felix Obuah, who led the top management team to the site, said an investigative committee’s report indicated that the developer grossly abused the approval given to him.
Obuah, who supervised the removal of some of the structures already built on the waterways, vowed that the FCT Minister, Nyesom Wike, would not allow anyone to sabotage the ongoing efforts towards restoring the already distorted Abuja Master Plan.
The coordinator, who also expressed surprise over another illegal takeover of green areas in Utako District by an unnamed foreign company, said that AMMC would not relent until all the places illegally acquired were recovered.
According to him, all the government officials found culpable in the illegal deals with the developers would be punished in line with extant civil service rules.
Obuah, while agreeing to allow the developer at Guzape to remove the remaining illegal structures, said that AMMC would return to the site after two weeks to continue with the demolition, should the developer fail to keep his word.
Also, the Director, Department of Development Control, Mukhtar Galadima, confirmed that the developer at Guzape refused to heed the stop work notices served on him.
Galadima disclosed that the enforcement team had doubled its monitoring activities to properly check encroachment and infractions from developers.
The developer and owner of Citiscape Villa, Guzape, Kadiri Ogbaidi, who admitted to have violated the approval given to him by the Department of Development Control, claimed that it was his subscribers who encroached into the green areas.
Ogbaidi, while expressing regret for the infractions against his company, also appealed for a two weeks grace period to remove all the illegal structures and revert to the original approval given to him.
He said, “You know it’s an estate, so we have approval for the entire estate. But there have been many infractions here, mostly from our subscribers, who we are responsible for. So, we won’t deny any wrongdoing. We take responsibility.
“We will remove every infraction here as specified by the authority. And we’ll take them out ourselves. We’ll bear the cost. So, we just appeal that the authority should allow us at least two weeks.
“We’ll start breaking them down. We’ll take them down ourselves. We have been law-abiding, and we only had issues with the authority before.”
UPDATE NEWS: Nigerians can now earn US Dollars through domain flipping, buy domain names for cheap and have it resold to earn up to $15,000.
Click here to start and get PROOF.
Join Daily Trust WhatsApp Community For Quick Access To News and Happenings Around You.
