By Sarah NEGEDU
Authorities of the Abuja Metropolitan Management Council, AMMC, have frowned against reports of alleged extortion of unsuspecting traders and artisans seeking shops at the relocation site in Wasa District.
Coordinator of the AMMC, Felix Obuah, had on Thursday revealed that some dubious union leaders have been caught charging as high as N1million, as against the N300,000 nonrefundable fee, for land registration in the ongoing relocation exercise of traders on the road corridors in the area.
Obuah while speaking at a meeting to update the traders on the enumeration exercise, proposed design and site plan among other things, warned the culprits to desist from the act, as the council would not hesitate to take actions against them.
He added that registration of traders and artisans not situated on the corridors of Apo mechanic village, was not approved as they are not qualified to benefit from the exercise.
The Coordinator threatened to handover dubious individuals or group of persons capturing and promising allocation of land to unqualified artisans and traders to security agencies.
He disclosed that so far, 11,000 individuals have registered for the relocation exercise.
“As I speak to you, over 11,000 people have collected the registration forms. We put it a N300,000.
“We try to put this in to make sure that many people who are ghost names will not even apply in the first place. But as of today, over 11,000 have paid, That’s not enough.
“And many people are even using this as 419, they’re going to the back and collecting over N650,000, but government is currently collecting 300,000.
“People are desperate. That’s why I came to tell them this is what we are doing. I will carry them along in every process, and at the end, whoever that is allocated this shop will be published.”
While acknowledging the difficulties he faced in dealing with the traders, he noted that over 45,000 names were submitted initially by different unions, describing such as inflated list.
According to him, the blotted names, among other false claims made the Council to conduct physical enumeration of the would-be affected traders.
“As a matter of fact, the meeting was actually meant to brief them how far we have gone with the arrangement of relocating them to Wasa. So we invited the stakeholders of Apo traders, mainly all the association heads, to brief them on how far we have gone, the essence of the enumeration, the essence of the form and how many people have paid and what next we intend to do.
“It is purely for those of them in the road corridor and those of them in the buffer areas, as these forms are not meant for people who are not along the corridor.
“I have discovered that most of them have gone as far as collecting money from people who are not having business to do with Apo, just because they want to grab land especially some of them who have money”, he stated.
Declaring that the exercise would be concluded before the end of the month, Obuah, noted that: “the plan to relocate the traders that have suffered different set back since 25 years ago would be concluded by this administration.
“You can see the next day, if you are following the brekete family news, you can see what happened. They were able to be convinced, and they were pleading that they have seen the truth now that please can the AMMC Coordinator allow them to now pay.
“Rumour has it that those shops have been given out to government officials, to girlfriends and brothers, but I was able to make it plain to all of them, not even one, and the Minister is not interfering.”
