The Abuja Metropolitan Management Council ( AMAC) on Monday nabbed one of the estate developers, for encroaching and converting waterways and green areas and selling the same to unsuspecting subscribers.
The Coordinator, AMMC, Chief Felix Obuah, who led top Management team to the site for enforcement, said that an investigative committee’s report indicated that the developer grossly abused the approval given to him.
Obuah who supervised the removing of some of the structures already built on the waterways, vowed that the FCT Minister, Nyesom Wike will not allow anyone to sabotage the efforts ongoing towards restoring the already distorted Abuja Master plan.
The Coordinator who also expressed aghast over another illegal takeover of other green areas in Utako by an unnamed foreign company, said that AMMC would not relent until all the places illegally acquired were recovered.
According to him, all the government officials found culpable in the illegal deals with the developers would be punished in line with extant civil service rules.
Obuah, while agreeing to allow the developer at Guzape to remove the remaining illegal structures, said that AMMC will return to the site after two weeks to continue with the demolition, should the developer fail to keep his words.
Also, the Director, Department of Development Control, Mukhtar Galadima confirmed that the developer at Guzape, refused to heed the stop work notices served on him.
Galadima disclosed that the enforcement team has doubled its monitoring activities to properly check encroachment and infractions from developers.
The developer and owner of Citiscape Villa, Guzape, Kadiri Ogbaidi who admitted to have violated the approval given to him by the Department of Development Control, claimed that it was subscribers who encroached into the green areas.
Ogbaidi while expressing regret for the infractions against his company, also appealed for two weeks grace period to remove all the illegal structures and revert to the original approval given to him.
He said, “You know it’s an estate, so we have approval for the entire estate. But there have been many infractions here, mostly from our subscribers, who we are responsible for. So, we won’t deny any wrongdoing. We take responsibility.
“We will remove every infraction here as specified by the authority. And we’ll take them out ourselves. We’ll bear the cost. So, we just appeal that the authority should allow us at least two weeks.
“We’ll start breaking them down. We’ll take them down ourselves. We have been law-abiding, and we only had issues with the authority before”.
Echezona Okafor.
