Dragging First Lady’s Name Into Bala’s Land Deals BREAKING NEWS: By the time some media aides of the minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Alhaji Bala Mohammed, finish reading this article, they will surely come smoking: they will accuse me of being used by their boss’ political enemies to malign him and ruin his political career. They will go further to accuse me of fighting a personal war with Bala, and perhaps, as they have done to some persons before, they might even attempt to say that I’ve been trying to extort money from their boss. But trust me; this strategy of some media aides is not new. As a matter of fact, I am now used to it. Notwithstanding that the focus and aim of this piece is to raise the concerns of many Nigerians, especially that of Abuja residents, about what they perceive to be wrong with Bala’s policy and programme. Indeed, in this column, I once drew the attention of Bala Mohammed to the muddle and mess oozing from the different departments charged with land allocation in Abuja and challenged the minister to urgently clean up the mess. My position was based on the huge messy land deals going on in Abuja Land Department and AGIS. My understanding of the deals then was that the minister might not have been aware of what was going on and that some corrupt civil servants within the system appeared not to be comfortable with the sanity Bala was trying to cause to happen in the ministry. I had also submitted that the filthy deals did not start under the Bala administration – that he may have inherited the problems from his predecessors -- an enormous problem which I considered then was created by both junior and senior civil servants in the Ministry of FCT in collaboration with many distrustful land speculators and some privileged people who believe they are above the law and could use their connection to people in high places to do whatever they liked in Abuja. Trust me: My concern when I wrote the piece was the several agonies many people went through and are still going through in the hands of some dubious staff members of the FCT Ministry. As a matter of fact, we have had cases where a plot of land was allocated to two or three persons via a dubious process. So many victims had complained loudly about how lands duly allocated to them were revoked and reallocated to other people without their knowledge until they finished building their houses. I had thought Bala was clean. But from several testimonies and complaints of many people in the last few days, it appears Bala and some people allegedly fronting for him have become part of the major dirty land deals in Abuja. In the last few days, I have heard from many senior staff members of the Bala-led ministry and big land developers in Abuja that “the only thing Bala Mohammed is doing in Abuja today is selling of lands in the name of Land Swap Initiative”. This lucrative business, according to them, is fetching the minister billions of naira monthly. They have also told me that one of his very close aides on land matters does the runs for him coolly. I am more worried that the name of the first lady, Dame Patience Jonathan, is also being dragged into Bala’s stinking land deals. A shining example is the controversial Pro-form/Saraha Estate on Plot 67 Kafe District in Gwarinpa, Abuja. Sometime last year, owners of the 200 duplexes in the estate petitioned President Goodluck Jonathan, detailing how the plot housing the properties they legitimately acquired from Saraha Homes Limited in 2009 was revoked in 2012, after they had finished building their houses, and reallocated same to a land speculating firm, Winning Clause (West Africa) Limited. In the petition, the aggrieved residents had stated that Winning Clause never applied for mass housing land and that it got the allocation of Plot 67 Kafe District dubiously. Consequently, the president directed the minister to investigate the matter and report back to him. Rather than do what the president directed him and officials of the ministry to do, some senior staff members in the departments of Mass Housing, Lands, Development Control and AGIS of the FCT, who have huge interests in the plot and acting on the instruction of the minister, were said to have used officials of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to force the chairman of the Saraha Homes Limited to hands off the properties and cede it to Winning Clause. Now, the latest issue on the matter is that the minister, through his fronts, was said to have asked owners of houses in the estate to pay N15 million each to the purported new owner. Their subtle threat was that Winning Clause is being promoted by the first lady. Could it be that the first lady and the minister are not aware of this deal? They must come clean on this matter. The recent motion by the House of Representatives to probe many dirty land deals in Abuja is a clear confirmation of how Nigerians, especially residents of Abuja, are disturbed about the questionable land activities of Bala. The general feeling is that he is in a hurry to acquire money for his election in Bauchi State in 2015. And, disturbed by alleged irregularities, the House had adopted a motion, which sought to investigate the Abuja Land Swap Initiative and other mass housing programmes recently introduced by Bala. The chamber had, 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. The House had 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 several land dirty deals in Abuja on the watch of Bala have no doubt created credibility crisis in the much-touted Abuja Land Swap scheme, which the minister initiated early this year. He had said that the scheme would rake in over N300 billion into the coffers of the FCTA. Bala had boasted that, with the landmark event, the FCTA had bid farewell to land fraud and racketeering. But, as the House of Representatives and residents of Abuja have noted, the scheme has only succeeded in deepening huge corrupt practices in Abuja. Consequently, the image of the federal government, nay President Jonathan, has been further battered by this ongoing doubtful business of Bala. Hundreds of innocent people are being made to suffer as a result of some officials’ greed and hot quest for wealth. Jonathan should do something very urgently. - See more at: leadership.ng/blog/070813/dragging-first-lady-s-name-bala-s-land-deals#st
Posted on: Wed, 07 Aug 2013 05:07:07 +0000
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015