developable and the title-holders were persons of financial capacity evidenced by their
generally expensive life styles!
Notwithstanding the terms of grant requiring development within two years (unless there
are practical physical or technical hindrances), these “big men and women” held on to
Abuja plots that they were selling for tens and even hundreds of millions of Naira.[65]
While these persons held on to these undeveloped plots, over 85,000 applicants for land
(some as far back as 1980), remained in MFCT without any allocation. Indeed, we found
that even staff of FCT had no plots of land allocated to them even though some have been in
Abuja from its inception.
The endemic corruption and the largescale distortion of the Abuja masterplan meant that
our capital’s physical development suffered, rents were wildly inflated beyond the levels
seen even in Lagos and Port Harcourt. A few connected speculators got rich. The fat cats
did not even care to pay requisite ground rents to the FCT. The scam was well entrenched.
In addition to the Land Administration and Resettlement Department, every department in
the FCT system from Engineering to Development Control, and agencies like AEPB and
Water Board were all engaged in the ‘allocation’, sub-leasing or otherwise alienating land
with the attendant confusion, record-keeping nightmares and total disregard of the
provisions of the Constitution, the Federal Capital Territory Act and the Land Use Act
which vested the president’s delegated power by statute only in the Minister of the FCT
and no other person or authority.
Staff of the defunct Ministry of the Federal Capital Territory (MFCT), the FCDA and other
FCT agencies all joined in the land speculation swindles. Multiple applications for land by
staff in various names with passport photos obtained from States’ Pilgrims Boards were
common. An example was when the EFCC discovered in the house search of a middle level
staff of the MFCT, - Musa Audu - 132 land allocations in various names!
Diversion of people’s allocations by MFCT staff, hiding of files to facilitate allocations of
the same plot of land to more than one person (double allocation), and even the allocation
of government-designated plots to individuals and companies were the order of the day.
Federal civil servants lobbied and bribed to be posted to MFCT, and those posted returned
the favour by facilitating allocations to those that posted them, and the cycle continued.
Such allocations were then laundered via a “stock market” within FCDA premises – which
by the way also provided trading floors for MFCT/FCDA contracts and employment
letters, amongst others. The use of powers of attorney and deeds of assignment to launder
and transfer these fraudulent allocations were the order of the day.
The revelation of the extent of abuses in Kubwa land allocations by Musa Audu mentioned above
shocked all of us in the MFCT. In a letter, reference CB: 3940/EFCC/FCT/ABJ/Vol.1/25, dated
March 24, 2005, titled “Progress Report on Investigation Activities relating to Land Fraud involving
Engr. Success O. Amuchie and 5 Others,” the EFCC named Musa A. Audu, the planning officer in
charge of the Kubwa Resettlement project, as being in possession of 132 allocation papers in various
names. Audu, Success and some MFCT staff involved were charged to Federal High Court by the
EFCC in 2005. The prosecution had not been concluded by the time we left office.
Nevertheless, we moved quickly to take immediate corrective measures with President Obasanjo’s
strong support at all times, while seeking sustainable, longer-term solutions. Amongst other steps:
We set up several committees consisting of outside and internal staff experts
to study the problems observed above and make recommendations.
We sought the assistance of the Police, ICPC and EFCC in the investigation
of all valid cases of corruption in land matters. The FCT is one of the first
‘states’ to have a resident EFCC branch to handle such matters.
We abolished all disparate departmental discretions in land matters and
centralized all land allocation under the Minister’s Office supported by all
the relevant technical departments.
We established a Task Force to computerize the land register and all land-
related records, and while the project was on for about 10 months; suspended
new land grants, except the most critical commercial or public building
needs.
We ordered a review of development control regulations which had
remained unchanged since the early 1990s. Consequently, in April 2007, the
revised FCT Development Control Regulations 2007 were debated and
approved by the FCT Executive Committee, and published pursuant to the
FCT Act and Nigerian Urban Planning and Development Act.
We gazetted two FCT Land Use Regulations pursuant to the Land Use Act,
revising the ground rents, compensation rates and other land-related charges
to encourage physical development in the territory. For instance, we lowered
ground rents and development charges on industrial, recreational and
agricultural land to encourage agriculture and other job-creating activities.
These efforts led to far-reaching land reforms – at the time, arguably the most advanced in Nigeria –
the fulcrum of which was the computerization of the Land Information System (LIS - the paper file
records) and this was supplemented by satellite-supported Geographical Information System (GIS),
the recertification exercise to sanitize the records, the updating of all pending land applications and
the enactment of the legal framework to guide its design and implementation.
Legal Basis for Land Reforms
On 30th June 2004, almost a year after I assumed office, I sought President Obasanjo’s approval to
recertify all titles to land in the FCT and related matters. These and other subsequent reforms in land
administration and management led to the creation of the Abuja Geographic Information System and
the gazetting of the FCT Land Use Regulations 2004 in the Federal Government Official Gazette No.
15, Vol. 94.
Everything we did that was described as “inconsistent” by the Yar'Adua administration was based on
well considered recommendations of senior FCT staff. Some went out of their way to mislead our
successors-in-office. Furthermore, each decision and action we took was guided by these laws, land
use regulations, and development control guidelines. Throughout our tenure, I never operated outside
these guidelines, nor did I ever go beyond the scope of my authority whether it had to do with
allocation, revocation or re-allocation of any land.
The legal grounds for revocation of title to land are listed in the Certificate of Occupancy. Any of the
contraventions listed below could lead to the exercise of discretion by the Minister to revoke the
title:
non-payment of annual ground rent or such other revised rent
non-payment of penal rents imposed by the Minister
non-payment of rates (including utilities) etc.
non-development within two years of grant
No title was revoked during my tenure without being found in contravention of one or more of these
conditions.[66] Moreover, these rules were applied blindly, without looking at the personality
involved. Indeed, wh
en I directed that all plots in Asokoro Extension that had infrastructure that were
undeveloped should have their titles revoked, the plot allocated to me in 1998 by the Mamman
Kontagora administration was included and revoked accordingly. I never ever received the
revocation letter because the FCT staff thought it was a mistake! It was not. I knew the particular plot
allocated to me would be affected but still approved the revocation. It was reallocated to an applicant
I do not know, and has since been developed by the new owners. President Obasanjo often told the
story of how a plot of land belonging to him was similarly revoked, using the same neutral criteria.
That was how we operated, applying rules to everyone, ourselves included, without favour or
discrimination.
Districts without ‘infrastructure’
The existence or lack of ‘infrastructure’ does not affect in any way the ministerial discretion to
revoke. This is because – (i) infrastructure is not mentioned as a condition precedent for development
in the C of O, or in the regulations as fettering the minister’s discretionary power, and (ii) existence
of infrastructure while an important input in the decision to revoke or not, is a matter of fact, not desk-
based speculation of general application. As an example, the Central Area, Gwarimpa and Mabushi
Districts have no comprehensive engineering infrastructure so no undeveloped plots allocated there
may be revoked. However, the reality is that parts of these districts, depending on location, had
adequate infrastructure and if an allottee has a plot in those areas, there was no general excuse not to
develop.
Clear examples of these are the FCT minister’s official residence in Gwarimpa-2 district. The
Mabushi Ministerial Quarters and Federal Ministry of Works were located in Mabushi District and
several buildings like the National Mosque, Federal Mortgage Bank and even the Federal
Secretariats had been built in the Central Area – all districts ‘without infrastructure’. It makes no
sense to argue that if a person has a plot in these districts, but near these facilities, and fails to
develop, he could hold on to the title forever. With respect, this position is wrong in law and in fact.
We were careful in revoking titles to land taking into consideration the surrounding facts, but fully
applying the law. Though the regulations do not require this, we only revoked plots in districts
without infrastructure when ground rents of years have remained unpaid and the special cases of “un-
issued R of Os” below.
Un-issued Letters of Offer (R of O)
In the course of the recertification exercise, my attention was drawn to about 2,500 cases of missing
files and un-issued letters of offer (or R of O in FCT parlance) – AGIS recommended that the cases
and allocations be reviewed, temporary files created or existing files vetted and cleared, or
otherwise cancelled based on available information. We took the decision to cancel some of them
because many had no subsisting applications for title in FCT, several were suspicious allocations,
and the beneficiaries had no valid addresses. Most of these plots under the "un-issued R of O" cases
fell within the districts without infrastructure. There was really no way many of the allocations could
stand scrutiny post-recertification and updating of all application records for land in FCT. The
revoked plots were subsequently allocated to applicants with valid and subsisting applications. It
was absurd for our successors to reinstate titles that were void in the first place – to persons that
either never applied for land, or never bothered to update their applications when notified to do so!
Failure to Re-certify Titles
By the time we left office, we had revoked 5,604 plot allocations due to the failure of allottees to
come forward for identification and recertify titles. The logic behind recertification is similar to a
nation changing the design, name or colour of its currency, but not the face value. In my lifetime,
Nigeria has gone through this more than once. It is necessarily a time-bound exercise designed to
expose, for instance, staff of MFCT that acquired plots in fictitious names, senior public servants
with land ownership not declared in their asset declaration forms, ‘big men’ - money launderers and
those hiding the proceeds of corruption, and so on. Our conclusion at the end of the exercise was that
most of those who failed to come forward had something to hide and largely fell amongst one of the
suspicious classes mentioned above. There were genuine cases like lost certificates, deaths of title-
holders and estate issues, delayed registration of assignments and powers of attorney that were
considered on a case-by-case basis after the expiration of the deadlines, and only on the
recommendations of AGIS.
It was, therefore, tragic that the Yar'Adua administration decided to reopen recertification and made
it ‘a continuous exercise’ - not only an absurdity, but a violation of gazetted regulations and
accordingly, unlawful. The decision suited the corrupt and fraudulent title-holders amongst FCT staff
and other elite just fine as they had a fresh opportunity to launder their fraudulent titles. It also created
a fresh onslaught of litigation between the FCT and new allottees since many of the 5,604 revoked
plots had been allocated to new allottees that then held valid and subsisting titles over them. Surely,
anyone could see that this was a self-serving decision that only legitimized years of land racketeering
in the FCT for the benefit of a few, but it was done by our successors-in-office.
One of the land issues we had to deal with concerned the category of plots known as ONEX site
yards. ONEX refers to the Outer Northern Expressway – the main road from Suleja-Kubwa coming
into Abuja up to Maitama District. The plots adjoining this road were provided to contractors doing
work in Abuja as ‘temporary site yards, renewable every five years’ – they were not meant to be
permanent titles. No city worth its salt grants plots of land along the principal access to construction
companies with their heavy equipment, and increased risks of accidents and attendant pollution. The
Department of Urban and Regional Planning drew my attention to this and recommended the
withdrawal of all offending titles and the re-planning of the whole corridor.
While the plots were to serve as temporary site yards, many of the allottees built without
development permits and in contravention of the terms of their grant – with the result that the area was
littered with mixed-use developments, factories, etc. contrary to the “site yard” land use authorized
by the FCT. The temporary allottees, mostly FCDA contractors, were assisted by staff of the
Engineering Department to get away with this illegality. We, therefore, took the decision to revoke the
titles and relocate those in gross contravention, while upholding those that were compliant with the
land use for the corridor. We granted some of the construction companies alternative plots in Idu
Industrial District and directed them to relocate. What remained uncompleted was the relocation of
those who violated the Master Plan, that is those assisted by FCDA Engineering Department to
convert the temporary allocations to 99 year leaseholds, which ought to be reversed. Any re-
consideration would be a disservice to the efforts to preserve the serenity
of the main highway of
entrance into our nation’s capital. Sadly, our successors again reversed all these decisions, for which
the city will pay a heavy price in the future.
Accelerated Development Programme (ADP)
The ADP was one of the initiatives approved by President Obasanjo to enable commercial
developers of land have easier and cheaper access to land for development in Abuja. The programme
sought to ensure that land was allocated directly to the developer [eliminating the middle-man
syndrome] and the development is required to be conducted within a specified timeline. The terms
and conditions for the grant were the result of consultations and focus group sessions internally and
with outside investors. The conditions attached vis-à-vis the equivalent open market value of the
plots on offer clearly confirms the programme’s attractiveness.
The conditions, though strange to those used to discretionary allocation of commercial plots in Abuja,
were, therefore, not stringent by any reasonable commercial standard. The programme was initially
marred by the misconduct of some of the officers charged with collating applications for the PPP
Technical Committee to make recommendations for my approval. We undertook investigations and
dismissed the erring employees. A revalidation exercise was subsequently conducted to ensure the
validity of the title-holders and ascertain any contravention of the terms of offer. By the time we left
office, many of the plots – nearly half were at advanced stages of being developed, and some had
even completed the buildings which the programme targeted for development.
We also moved against government agencies that were illegally converting land to unintended uses.
We revoked titles to residential plots allocated to government agencies for residential purposes that
no longer needed them, subdivided and allocated them to various applicants for land.
Many rushed to subdivide and share out the plots to their senior officers, while others sought to
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