Residents and property owners in Committee on Resettlement and Development (CRD) Layout, in Lugbe, Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, have appealed to President Bola Tinubu to save them from threats by the Federal Capital Development Authority (FCDA) to demolish their homes and reallocate their lands to private estate developers.
In a “Save Our Souls” petition, copies of which were sent to several government authorities, including the Minister of the FCT, Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Secretary to the Government of the Federation, and the National Assembly, the residents alleged that they have been subjected to harassment by officials of the Development Control Department of the FCDA.
The residents said the latest experience happened yesterday, when some of them returned home from work to find demolition notices pasted on the walls of their buildings by persons who claimed to be officials of the FCDA. They said the notices informed owners of the affected houses that their properties have been marked for demolition within 21 days to make way for a central market in the area.
The residents expressed surprise that the Layout, which has been in existence since 1996 with fully developed properties, would be converted into a general market without the knowledge of residents and land owners. They urged President Tinubu and the FCT Minister to wade into the situation to avoid it imploding and resulting in avoidable multi-dimensional crises.
Since 2014, the residents said Mr Odili, through his firms, Houses for Africa Nigeria Limited; Jonah Nigeria Limited, and Paulo Homes Limited in River Park Estate, has been waging a series of illegal wars of conquest to achieve territorial expansion of his allocation into CRD land area.
The residents said the CRD layout was created in 1996 by the FCDA to relocate and resettle persons affected by the dualisation and expansion of the Airport Road within the Lugbe 1 area, and that most of the lands were legally acquired from the FCDA.
“The area in contention, CRD Lugbe 1 Layout, is identified in the Abuja Geographic Information System (AGIS) as Plot No. 0235, where land title owners have fully developed and occupied since 1996,” the Chairman of the CRD Residents and Landlords Association, Abdulwasiu Mustapha, said in the petition.
The residents sought to meet with the Director of Development Control, Mukhtar Galadima, to seek clarification on their action and Mustapha said residents who attended the meeting with Galadima were surprised that instead of addressing the areas of breaches of the extant laws regarding building designs and structures, he claimed the CRD community has been re-designed, and that most of the fully-developed houses and structures fell within the road corridors and a central market.
The Chairman said Mr. Galadima did not produce the re-designed CRD layout, neither did he identify the beginning of the road infrastructure and where it would terminate.
“We have lost confidence and trust in the director’s handling of the matter. There is no way an important action such as redesigning CRD would be done fairly without the involvement of the existing residents since 1996. As most of the residents of the CRD community are public and civil servants with pensioners, who used their meager life savings to raise a place for their families to live, we will resist every attempt to render us homeless and turn us into refugees,” the residents said.