Nyako Condemns Closure of Adamawa Liaison Office • FCTA revokes Kwankwasos plot at Maitama •We have no apology, says minister Governor Murtala Nyako of Adamawa State Sunday condemned the closure of the state’s liaison office in Abuja by the Minister of Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Senator Bala Mohammed. The Adamawa State liaison office was used as the temporary headquarters of the splinter faction of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), following the closure of their office in Abuja by the police last month. Reacting to the development yesterday, Nyako described the action of Mohammed as overzealous and a sycophantic act to impress President Goodluck Jonathan and the PDP National Chairman, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur. This happened just as a plot of land belonging to Governor Musa Rabiu Kwankwaso, of Kano State in the highbrow area of Maitama district, Abuja, was also revoked yesterday by the FCTA. The governor who spoke to journalists through the Secretary of the New PDP in Adamawa State, Mr. P.P. Elisha, said the closure could truncate the reconciliation bid currently going on between the president and the seven aggrieved governors of the party . Elisha advised the minister not to drag his office into the PDP crisis, adding that his actions might complicate the efforts of the president and PDP family from achieving a lasting solution to the crisis. Elisha admonished the president and well meaning members of the party to put the PDP in order before the 2015 general election, noting that prolonged crisis in the party would not augur well for the party in the 2015 elections. He explained that Nyako had not committed any offence by allowing the G7 governors to make use of the state’s liaison office as the temporary secretariat of the New PDP, but rather created a platform so that reconciliation could be reached. The Adamawa liaison office was approved by FCT as an office and it can be used as operative secretariat of any political party as an office. There is nothing wrong in using it as an office. An office is an office and there is no difference between the Adamawa liaison office and the national secretariat of the new PDP but we believe that the Minister of FCT wants to impress Bamanga Tukur and Mr President that is the reason he ordered the closure.” The party chieftain also explained that the sealing of the office was politically motivated to weaken the Baraje faction of the party, but said they would never be intimidated by anybody. And in another crushing move against a leading member of the new PDP, the authorities of the FCTA revoked the allocation of a plot of land in high-brow Maitama District, Abuja belonging to the Kano State Governor, Kwankwaso over alleged violation of terms. According to sources close to the Land Department and the Development Control Department of FCTA, the former Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives during the military era acquired a property situated on a piece of land measuring about 2,500 square metres in Maitama District during the sale of government houses under a previous administration. Kwankwaso was said to have later opted to extend the land by applying for the adjoining green areas. He got an approval based on the condition that he would not erect permanent structure on the extension, but restrict himself to the approved purpose which is for garden and recreation use. It was however gathered that rather than confine himself to the purpose for which the approval was given by the FCTA, he proceeded to erect permanent structures on the said extension in clear violation of terms and Land Use Purpose in the FCT. An official of FCTA who wanted his identity protected said it was unbecoming for a state governor and a former federal lawmaker who should have known better to erect illegal structure in flagrant contravention of the Abuja Master Plan and green area rules in the FCT. The official said with the withdrawal of the allocation, the Development Control Department may be left with no option than to remove the said illegal development. But the FCTA has insisted that it has no question to answer following its decision to seal-off the Adamawa State Governors Lodge. FCTA, in a statement signed yesterday by the Special Adviser to the FCT Minister on Media, Mr. Nosike Ogbuenyi, made this defence in response to issues raised by Chief Eze Chukwuemeka Eze on behalf of some New PDP politicians. Ogbuenyi said: The attention of the FCTA has been drawn to a statement by Chief Eze Chukwuemeka Eze on behalf of some politicians over the recent closure of the Adamawa Government Lodge, following the contravention of FCT land use purpose, through the unlawful conversion of a residential plot to an office. We view Eze’s statement as diversionary since it failed woefully to address the issues at stake. Chief among the issues at stake is violation of land use purpose which cannot stand. The action by those persons behind the conversion remains illegal and abhorrent. According to him, FCT was only interested in the rule of law and not political posturing and propaganda, adding that the point must be stressed that no person or group of persons is above the law. He warned that those who unlawfully and brazenly converted the Adamawa State Governor’s Lodge, Maitama plot, a residential plot, to an office are the ones that should apologise to the people of the state not the FCTA or the Hon. Minister of FCT. What the FCTA is insisting on is compliance with land use purpose and nothing more. The FCTA therefore views the so-called ultimatum as empty and laughable. The action taken by the FCTA in sealing off the Adamawa Government Lodge was a normal administrative and not political measure. If Eze and his masters have any issue with the PDP, its Governors Forum or the Presidential Villa, they should channel their grievances properly and leave the FCTA out of it, he added.
Posted on: Tue, 15 Oct 2013 03:21:13 +0000
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