By Emmanuella Oghenetega
The Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Ezenwo Nyesom Wike has allayed the fears of property owners in the controversial River Park Estate, stating that the FCT Administration has no plans of taking away their property.
While addressing journalists on yesterday, after a tour of parts of the estate where illegal structures were recently removed by the FCT Department of Development Control, the Minister said, “it was not the intention of the Administration to take people’s property; rather, it wants property owners to do the right thing.”
Explaining River Park estate’s peculiar case, the Wike 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.
Before his visit to River Park estate, the Minister inspected ongoing work at the arterial road N5 (Obafemi Awolowo Way) to ascertain the level of work at the site.
The Minister had earlier attended the funeral service of the late Head of the FCTA Civil Service, Mrs Grace Adayilo, to pay his last respects to the deceased.
