APPARENTLY disturbed by alleged irregularities, the House of Representatives has adopted a motion, which sought to investigate the Abuja Land Swap Scheme and other Mass Housing programmes recently introduced by the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA).
Consequently, the Chamber Thursday, without debate resolved to constitute an ad-hoc committee to investigate all cases of land allocation by the authorities during the period of 2010 till date to ascertain the propriety and other alleged sundry abuses that border on racketeering.
The panel is expected to report back to the House within four weeks.
The decision, according to the parliament, is predicated on the need to identify beneficiaries and their competences as claimed, which the House said, was crucial to the realisation of the goals of the scheme.
Introducing the motion under matters of urgent importance, the sponsor, Ibrahim Tukur el-Sudi, noted that the FCT Minister, Bala Mohammed, has in the discharge of his duties, approved various initiatives such as the Mass Housing and Land Swap Schemes, under which several hectares of land have been allocated to corporate entities, including commercial and residential plots, to both corporate institutions and individuals.
El-Sudi said some of the corporate entities who are beneficiaries of the huge allocations are either not incorporated by CAC, or have same directors with different addresses as promoters, which he said, is suggestive of land racketeering.
The lawmaker further said that examples abound of shadowy organisations that have leveraged on similar schemes to grab land in the FCT like the Malaysian Gardens allocated on an entire district, which remains undeveloped till date.
"The identities of the beneficiaries are shrouded in secrecy, underpinning the fact that the beneficiaries do not have requisite experience of property development elsewhere and may not have the financial muscle to realise the objectives that informed the allocation of expensive acreages," he added.
The umbrella body of the indigenous people of Nigeria's Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja on Tuesday said it plans to carry out a one million-man protest march to the National Assembly to protest the usurpation of their ancestral land by the Federal Government.
The angry aborigines, under the aegis of Original Inhabitants Development Association of Abuja (OIDA), in a statement, have also expressed plans to "institute a legal case against the Federal Government of Nigeria to challenge the forceful usurpation of our ancestral lands through Section 297 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) without prompt payment of compensation or due process as outlined in Section 44 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended)."
The Guardian