From Jude Dangwam, Jos
The Plateau State Task Force on Recovery of Purported Auctioned Government Properties has disclosed that they were able to uncovered illegal allocations of government lands and buildings in Jos North and Jos South Local Government Area of the State to cronies of the outgoing Lalong led administration in the State.
About 5000 illegal properties identified by an Agency of government and some other government properties were also uncovered by the Tasks Force were not properly documented while some were been illegally allocated or sold to certain persons.
Chairman of the Tasks Force, Nde Isaac Wadak made this known on Tuesday at a press briefing on the preliminary findings of the Committee, adding that 50 petitions were received from the public aside vital information being obtained from MDAs.
“During our interaction with JMDB, to the shock of the Taskforce, it was mentioned that there is about 5,000 properties that are due for demolition because they didn’t follow normal processes.
“We tried to find out why is it so? And they said logistics and administrative challenge, and equipment to execute. The issue of whether government is going to pay for something that is illegally erected does not arise.
“If you know you are occupying a place illegally, and you don’t have the right to be there is going to be brought down there is no any issue of compensation. We have received over 50 petitions from members of the public aside those we received from the MDAs,” he strongly stated.
Wadak maintained that information so far received indicate that “there are illegal allocations of government lands and buildings in some of the LGAs, especially within Jos North and Jos South. These properties have either not been properly documented, or have been illegally allocated or sold.
“On vehicles, the Task Force was furnished with a comprehensive list of vehicles bought by government between 2015 and 2023. The status and whereabouts of these vehicles are clearly captured, including the procedure guiding boarding of vehicles and the category of officers qualified to be allocated vehicles at the end of their tenure. Beneficiaries are clearly spelt out and reflected via exco resolution of 14/06/2018,” he stated
Wadak maintained that they are preparing to enter another phase of verification from locations and persons where information has so far been received. “This is to authenticate the variability of every information and to recover where necessary.”