Explaining why his administration has not made allocations since inception two years ago, FCT Minister, Mr Muhammad Musa Bello, revealed that he had to resolve about 500 pending land issues, even as he wondered why past governments could buckle under pressure to engage in multiple allocations that would end in series of litigations and hence be detrimental to the image and economy of the FCT Administration.

Bello stated this last week during a media briefing organized as part of events lined up to commemorate two years in office of the Federal Government under President Muhammadu Buhari.

Land Administration

“In the past, you saw up to four or five people ‎contesting for one piece of land! How did that happen? The FCT Administration has resolved more than 500 land cases”.

According to Bello, past FCT Administrations fell under intense pressure, which he is also facing, in order to allocate land, making them fall into the trap of multiple allocations, and even some without layouts.

He said: “I have been under tremendous pressure to allocate land but because of the mistakes of the past, whereby land allocated to A was also allocated to B and so on,” this government has withstood huge pressure in similar direction, but was however considering land allocation where there were layouts.

Bello also said that the FCTA had been able to dislodge a land racketeering group which used to operate in Area 11, near the Abuja Geographic Information Systems (AGIS) head office.

Bello seized the opportunity to give a general score card of his nearly two-year Administration, stating that his priority was to complete on-going projects because even at 95 percent, if the remaining five percent is not there, such a project would be of any use to the people for which it is meant.

NAN