A wave of massive demolition is looming in parts of the Abuja Municipal Area Council, as the FCT Administration has raised alarm over the proliferation of unapproved housing estates and other illegal developments along the Idu train station, Apo, and Lugbe areas of AMAC.
Already, the Department of Development Control said it has served all relevant notices and has marked the affected structures in the areas, adding that its officials will be embarking on a massive demolition exercise at appropriate time.
Director of the department, Mukhtar Galadima, told journalists that the alarm had become necessary, following the wave of social media adverts by land grabbers and illegal developers of housing estates.
Galadima explained that these areas are yet to be detailed with design layout, alleging that fraudsters are going about with fake title document claiming to have been allocated to them by AMAC.
He added that it is against the development rules and regulations for somebody while in the course of implementing his or her plan to change it without recourse to seeking approval for modified plan.
He noted that with constitution of FCT Urban and Planning Tribunal, land grabbing and other menace will be reduced, as there would be prosecution of defaulters.
The director also revealed that developers of illegal structures and land grabbers will be made to pay for the cost of demolition and afterwards be handed over to the police for diligent prosecution.
According to him, “Our attention has been drawn to some areas of the city where people are developing without any title developments. And we want to educate the public and to inform them that some of these adverts are on illegal developments.
“As the department of Development Control in FCT, we found it expedient to adequately inform the citizens on the need to secure building plan and approval, to enable them develop inline with what is being approved.
“We know that in the course of implementing development proposals there are rooms for modifications, adjustments and the wisest thing to do is to resubmit the design and seek for approval before changing any aspect of the approved plan, failure to do so is an apparition of what was really approved for the developer.
“But, I would like to reiterate that all illegal developments along the Idu Train Station, Apo Tapi and Lugbe Areas, where people are busy spending money, and unsuspecting Nigerians are subscribing to these housing estates, we are saying now these are illegal developments, and we have served all relevant notices, so at an appropriate time, we are going to remove them.”
