Land owners at the AMAC Housing Estate are calling on the chairman of the council, Christopher Maikalangu, to make provision for access roads within the estate.
They said the roads wiil help them have access to their plots and also hasten development on the plots and prevent encroachments by land grabbers.
Chairman of AMAC Estate Phase 3 Landlords’ Association, Alhaji Imran Abdullah, lamented that efforts made in the past to convince previous Area Council Chairmen to open up the place through the provision of good roads and other facilities were not successful due to lack of political will.
AMAC Housing Estate, located on the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport road, Abuja is the only estate owned by the Abuja Municipal Area Council, but vast of land spreading 15, 16, 18 and 19 series, are left undeveloped due to the absence of access roads.
Abdullah lamented that the lack of commitment by the council, has exposed the plot owners to danger as they are, on regular basis, being threatened by the land grabbers who have invaded the Phase 3 in their droves of recent.
He said, “To our surprise, most of these land grabbers have the gut to openly display land titles purportedly procured from the Federal Capital Development Authority, FCDA, for the estate land that purely belongs to the AMAC.
“They invaded us often times accompanied by some soldiers and policemen, who we know are providing them with illegal protection to harass our members whose allocation papers were signed over twenty years by relevant authorities.
“We are calling on the Chairman of Abuja Municipal Area Council to come to our aid and show leadership to build access roads to prevent further threat and humiliation we are being subjected to as the original land owners.
“We also appeal to the Chairman to commence a probe into the activities of these desperate people, especially to expose the FCDA accomplices issuing these titles for land properly allocated to the genuine owners.”
According to Alhaji Imran, “we want to use this occasion to inform the management of Abuja Municipal Area Council, AMAC, that we can no longer folds out arms to see this illegality thriving , hence the ongoing “Identify your plot and develop” sensitization we have embarked among our members.
“The situation in AMAC Housing Estate is disheartening, we cannot access our plot because of road challenge and even the Phase 1 and 2, which have experienced a little of development is wearing sorry sight as most of the area is fast degenerating into slums due to lack of facilities, especial road network”, he said.
No hope yet for FCT public school pupils as strike lingers
Three weeks after teachers in public primary schools in the FCT began strike, pupils of the schools are still loitering on the streets.
While some of them now follow their parents to the farm, others, especially those in the city centre, make use of any available playground nearby to play football.
Shortly after schools in the FCT resumed for the first term academic calendar, the teachers withdrew from classes in what they called an indefinite strike to press home their demands.
Some of their grievances include the non-payment of the remaining 60 per cent of the 25 months minimum wage arrears as well as other entitlements by the area council chairmen.
The feud is between the LEA teachers and the six area council chairmen, with the FCT Minister, Nyesom Wike, intervening during their last strike by paying 40 per cent of the areas while the council chairmen promised to pay the remaining 60 per cent, a pledge the teachers said the chairmen had failed to fulfil.
Addressing journalists at the end of the FCT executive council meeting held at the Teachers’ House in Gwagwalada, the chairman of the FCT wing of the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT), Comrade Abdullahi Mohammed Shafas, said his members had no option than to resume the strike earlier suspended on the same issue because of the non-response from the six area council chairmen to the 14-day ultimatum earlier issued to them.
Since then, all public primary schools in the nation’s capital had remained closed with the pupils roaming on the streets.
At the city centre, a group of primary school pupils playing football at one of the schools in Jabi district of Abuja.
Although there was no school, the gate of the school was thrown open and the children were using the opportunity to play football on a field there.
All attempts to speak with any of them proved abortive as they were busy with their game.
Meanwhile, some parents have appealed to the FCT minister to intervene again by calling the council chairmen to order so that the crisis could be resolved once and for all.
Madam Esther Daodu regretted that 60 per cent of the children are those of the natives, wondering why the council chairmen, who are also natives, could be adamant to the plight of their children.
Earlier, the Chairman of the Parents Teachers Association (PTA) in the FCT, Alhaji Usman Abubakar, expressed concern over the strike in the FCT, saying the action is affecting children, who are now staying idle in their homes.
He called on the stakeholders in the education sector to wade in to take the children off the streets.
