FCDA Gate: Haven of land speculations

Findings by Sunday Trust revealed that the  main gate which serves as a car park for members of staff of FCDA and visitors alike have become a beehive of  land racketeers  who scout around looking for clients  interested in buying choice lands within the nation’s capital city. According to Balogun Ahmed, an undergraduate of the […]

Findings by Sunday Trust revealed that the  main gate which serves as a car park for members of staff of FCDA and visitors alike have become a beehive of  land racketeers  who scout around looking for clients  interested in buying choice lands within the nation’s capital city.

According to Balogun Ahmed, an undergraduate of the university of Abuja, who claimed to have been actively involved in the business for some time, “the land racketeers are mostly people who are not gainfully employed or those sacked by their employers and resorted to the business as their last hope, buoyed by the fact that Abuja besides Lagos is where land has become a hot cake.”

Also speaking, Haruna Bashir, who said he has been in the business for well over six years, debunked the claims that the land speculators are fraudsters. In his words, “we are genuine business men like every other people. We are what some people call marketers. We look around for buyers for our clients. The job is very simple and easy to do. All you need to do is look for anyone who has lands or even houses for sale in Abuja who is willing to sell his property. Then, collect the photocopies of the property and then come here to market them. At the end of the day, if you are able to sell the property, you will be given a certain percentage as commission.”  

While explaining the reason why they converge at the FCDA gate, Bashir said that “it is very obvious.  Anyone who wants to buy land in the FCT will naturally come to the FCDA or AGIS to seek clarification. So when they come, we approach them and tell them we have genuine lands for sale. To convince them further, we will show them photocopies of the documents.”

Francis Imafidon, an estate agent who also retails land and other valuable property, told Sunday Trust that a typical land in the FCT goes for as high as 140 million naira depending on the location in the city. According to him, “the business of selling lands is a very lucrative one because, for every land you sell, you get 10 percent of the price. For instance, if you sell a property for nine million, you can get up to 10 percent of that amount which is a lot of money.”

Further findings revealed that these land agents, most of whom have spent years in the business and have made fortune through it are always in possession of land documents that are available for sale and approach prospective buyers with such documents.

While looking for buyers, it was also gathered that these speculators are aware that most buyers are always wary of fake land and would assure them of the genuineness of the land which they usually claim is on the AGIS system.

Apparently worried about the activities of land racketeers in the city, FCT Minister, Adamu Aleiro sacked more than 83 members of staff of AGIS about 685 plots of land were and revoked sometimes last year.

It was also gathered that a cabal operates in the AGIS conniving with both unsuspecting and even fraudulent land buyers to forge documents and input them into the computer system of the AGIS, thus allocating lands to people without the authority of the minister.

But while reacting, Director of Lands in the FCT, Mrs Nana Buhari, explained that the workers were laid off simply because they were casual workers.

According to her, “They were employed as casual staff at the beginning of the recertification exercise in 2004 to assist in the computerization of land records in the FCT. Now that the exercise is almost concluded, it became imperative to reduce the staff strength.”

In doing this, qualification, competence, diligence and federal character among other criteria, were considered in picking those that were retained as employed permanent staff.

 Also in a bid to checkmate the booming trade of the land speculators, the FCT minister recently announced the revocation of plots that were illegally acquired.  “The FCTA, pursuant to the on-going efforts at sanitizing the FCT Land Information System, hereby inform the general public that the purported Rights/Certificates of Occupancy of the plots of land have been discovered to be forged or fake and accordingly, the purported Rights/Certificates of Occupancy are hereby revoked and voided and therefore of no proprietary value,” he said.

 Prominent among the places affected by the revocation are high-brow areas of the FCT, such as Asokoro and Maitama, in addition to lesser attractive areas covering the Satellite Towns of the FCT.