Aliero, Shere-Galuwi and Wasa project

I am compelled to write on the above topic due to my deep concern for the inhabitants of this area, contractors and other labourers.  The then El-Rufai administration awarded the contract for the re-settlement projects of Shere-Galuwi and Wasa in order to successfully achieve the resettlement promise to the inhabitants. The project was however stopped […]

I am compelled to write on the above topic due to my deep concern for the inhabitants of this area, contractors and other labourers.  The then El-Rufai administration awarded the contract for the re-settlement projects of Shere-Galuwi and Wasa in order to successfully achieve the resettlement promise to the inhabitants.

The project was however stopped by the Aliero administration for reasons best known to it.  But as a public analyst, there are fundamental human rights issues I would like to raise to the administration:

i)    Where does the Aliero administration expect the resettled people to stay, since they no longer have access to their ancestral homes?

ii)    Why divert the funds meant for a particular project to another?

iii)    How does the FCT want the contractors who borrowed money from banks to execute the contracts cope, especially going by the high bank interest rates?

These and others are questions waiting for answers from the Aliero administration.  Some months ago, I reliably gathered information about the demise of one of the contractors as a result of the incessant intimidation by officials of Aso Loans and Savings Society, where the contractors borrowed money from to execute the contract.

By the way, the Aso Savings and Loans Ltd is even a subsidiary of the Abuja Investment and Property Development Company Ltd which is a parastatal under the FCTA.  This is a case of a father killing his own child by himself.  It is high time the Aliero administration made a provision in contractors to return to site for the interest of the poor inhabitants.  We are in a democracy, and people’s rights must be protected.

Both the inhabitants and contractors are Nigerians, and as such they have as much rights as the Minister.  When the project was on, employment opportunities were created for idle civil engineers, architects, labourers, and even indigenes of these areas.  The stoppage of the project made some families to be presently starving.  I want to urge and implore the Executive Secretary of the FCDA, Engr. Sani Mohammed Alhassan (Sarkin Yakin Keffi), a qualified engineer, to rightly advise his minister, because he is not a civil engineer, but a retired Customs boss.  

The quality of a true statesman is better reflected and demonstrated through compassion, fairplay, tolerance, consideration, and inclusion of all and sundry in policy formulation and implementation.  While waiting for my honourable minister’s response, I want to appeal for the setting up of a committee to visit the sites to see for themselves how the abandonment is making Nigerians to lose resources.

Salihu Dantata Mohammed wrote in from Abuja, FCT