· “No estate on Airport Road has land title”
The battle for Trademore Estate Lugbe, is heating up, with authorities of the FCT Administration and residents of the estate at loggerheads over the fate of the sprawling community.
While the FCTA is of the opinion that a part of the estate will have to go to safeguard the lives and properties of its residents, the residents are insisting on creating alternative water channels.
Trademore Estate has been in the news due to the perennial flooding ravaging the area. At least, one person reportedly lost his life in the flood that hit the estate on June 23, submerging over 116 houses in the process.
The administration immediately declared the area a disaster zone with a directive to begin considering the evacuation of the residents from the estate, so as to prevent further casualties in the event of another flooding.
Permanent Secretary FCTA, Mr. Olusade Adesola, who gave the directive after assessment of the area, said firm actions needed to be taken, given the magnitude of the devastation recorded.
The directive did not, however, go down well with residents of the estate as they took to the streets to register their displeasure.
Over 200 residents of the estate, penultimate week, barricaded the Lugbe Airport Road to protest any planned demolition of the estate.
The residents still insist that the flood issue can be addressed through channeling and dredging of waterways in the estate and not necessarily demolishing the community.
The residents, in a written response to claims that Trademore Estate is illegal, said it was rather worrisome that government would situate polling units within the estate during elections, but would turn around to declare the area a disaster zone.
The document, signed by the chairman of the resident association, Mr. Adewale Adenaike, maintained that the estate got all the necessary allocation papers and approval from the Abuja Municipal Area Council, AMAC, in 2007 when the council was in charge of land allocation
“When the FCTA took over, all land allottees were requested to come for recertification which the developer did at the time. No single allottee on Airport Road has been recertified till date. How then is the land illegal?
“Going by this narrative of the FCTA, it means there is no legal estate on the entire Airport Road in Abuja which is preposterous.
“90 percent of the houses in the estate are on mortgage financed by the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria. Would the Federal Mortgage Bank have given NHF loans to individuals to buy houses without verifying the authenticity of the land title?
“The Nigeria Police Force bought 100 units of houses in the estate. Would they have done that without investigating the genuineness of the land title?
“The commissioning of the units of the Nigerian Police Force in the estate was done by the then Vice President Namadi Sambo. Would the Vice President of the country have commissioned an illegal estate while in office?
“Trademore Estate alone has over three polling units. When votes are taken from here it is not illegal. When we pay tenement rates, land charges and other numerous taxes to the same FCTA, we are not illegal. Now that time has come for them to provide storm water infrastructure, they have declared our estate illegal.”
The chairman, who blamed the FCTA for the current condition of the estate, insisted that the area was neither illegal nor a disaster zone.
“These are questions that the lazy civil servants in the FCT administration need to answer for the world to know the truth of what is going on. Trademore Estate is NOT illegal, and it is not a “disaster zone”. Rather, what we have is a disaster leadership in the FCTA who are too shy to think and too lazy to carry out their primary responsibility.
“What we need is the implementation of the already provided solutions to the flooding. Not the easy blame game that the FCT administration is trying to play here,” he stated.
The association disclosed that a detailed investigation into the causes of the perennial flooding in the area suggested that after the initial flooding experienced in 2014, the estate began witnessing perennial flooding from 2019 due to the collapse/ failure of the dam at Aleita.
They also noted that the massive reclamation of land after Trademore culminating in the Wisdom Estate, Palm Height phase 4, etc, had distorted the lateral flow of water after Trademore.
They, therefore, recommended that the dam at Aleita needs to be evaluated.
