FCTA orders parks to revert to original design or risk revocation

…says land administration reformed, strengthened under current administration

Ukpono Ukpong, Abuja

The Federal Capital Territory Administration, FCTA has ordered operators of packs in the nation’s capital who have violated their terms of lease, which has made them to constitute nuisance as well as security threat while encouraging drug peddling and other social vices such as prostitution among other, to revert or risk revocation.

The Executive Secretary of the Federal Capital Development Authority (FCDA), Engr. Umar Jibrin, gave the warning during a press briefing in Abuja.

He stressed that parks was solely meant recreation and not a place to sale alcohol as against the current practice in Abuja.

While lamenting how some people take advantage of parks to grab lands in the territory, he noted that they are only doing so at their own risk as all parks remained properties of the government explaining that it was only leased for a period of 30years.

Speaking further, he also discloses that the land administration in the FCT have been reviewed with title documents gaining more security and bankable as against “worthless” papers in the past.

He disclosed that the during FCT executive council meeting decisions that would improve service delivery to residents and ensure smooth land administration were taken.

“When this Administration (of Muhammad Musa Bello) came on board, there were a lot of issues regarding land administration, so we took a holistic move to see how the issues bedevilled the FCTA could be solved.

“We therefore reviewed many of such issues that would have positive impact on the city and its residents, including mass housing delivery, especially in the satellite towns, general environmental cleaning, water provision and security issues, among others.

“The exco meeting also looked at legal issues, you know the FCT itself is a product of law so we have to follow the laws while living in the Territory and running it.

That is why the Legal Secretary has been ensuring that everything we do not end up in court -how we can work without having legal issues distracting us.”

Also the Legal Services Secretary, Mohammed Umar, on his part revealed that the processes to strengthen and standardise land allocation was as a result of the administration meeting over 2000 litigation cases on assumption of duty and more than 50 percent of them being land-related.

“We realized there was no standard operation manual (no harmonised system that showed how the process should work). Whenever there is room for discretion, there is room for abuse.

And you know, in line with the FG’s position on the ease of doing business, we need to know the rules and procedures so that people are prepared for the processes in order not to get trapped along the way.

“More than 50 percent of the litigation are as a result of recertification. You cannot revoke somebody’s land because he did not come for recertification.”

He explained further that the many problems responsible for the high number of court cases were discovered, some of which include multiple allocation, land racketeering, unverifiable data and parity in what was on the paper and what was on the ground, among several others.

According to the Legal Counsel, the FCTA took steps to comprehensively tackle the myriad of land issues which include, retreat for relevant stakeholders, including legal officers, rejuvenated its land use allocation committee and took a position that land allocation would only be done after completion of engineering designs.

“If you get an allocation that says you have 1000 square meter, but after engineering design, you are left with almost nothing, your paper is, so to say, worthless. So we have decided that until engineering designs are done, no allocation should be made.

He also said that the FCT exco also launched a legal manual/journal that would guide legal offices and lawyers in operations and service delivery.