Plateau federal low cost houses: Ejected tenants seek Fashola’s intervention

Tenants of federal low cost houses in Plateau State lament their eviction by the state government as they await Fashola’s intervention When the Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Raji Fashola, requested the Plateau State government to make land available to the federal government to build another Federal Housing Estate in the state, many […]

Tenants of federal low cost houses in Plateau State lament their eviction by the state government as they await Fashola’s intervention

When the Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Raji Fashola, requested the Plateau State government to make land available to the federal government to build another Federal Housing Estate in the state, many saw the request as a noble one which intention was to provide housing units for Nigerians.
However, that singular statement by Fashola brought back painful memories to the 108 evicted residents of the Federal Low Cost Housing Estate, Phase 1 in Mayago Road Jos, Plateau State, who were the beneficiaries of the first federal housing initiative in 1976. To the 108 members and over 800 members of their families, it was a reminder of the ugly experience of watching their belongings thrown outside their homes by the then management of the then Plateau Investment and Property Development Company (PIPDC).
The estate in question originally consisted of 250 two-bedroom bungalows with courtyards and is one of the 12 built in 1975/1976 by the federal government in Lagos, Ibadan, Benin, Port Harcourt, Calabar, Enugu, Ilorin, Jos, Kaduna, Kano, Sokoto and Maiduguri. The then Federal Ministry of Housing, Urban Development and Environment had directed the respective state governments to manage the estates on behalf of the federal government and in the case of Plateau State, PIPC had been saddled with that responsibility. 
However, available documents show that in 1999, the estate was transferred to PIPDC to allocate to tenants who were on a three years’ tenancy agreement after which those considered suitable would be given the option of outright purchase on the condition that the allocations be in line with the Federal Ministry of Housing, Urban Development and Environment circular No.H2/2/140 dated April, 1976.
The guideline for the allocation of the houses had stipulated that “the main purpose of the three years’ tenancy period is to allow the authority to preselect would be owner occupiers on the basis of ability to comply with the Housing Authority’s rules and regulations and to meet all financial obligation.”
But the tenants claimed that PIPC began to increase the rent of the estate in quick succession and threatened to eject tenants who objected, forcing the tenant’s association to file a suit at the Jos High Court. Available court documents show that the tenants won at the state High Court but PIPDC appealed and won at the Court of Appeal and Supreme Court.
The 2005 Supreme Court judgment which ruled in favour of PIPC had given PIPC the opportunity to sell the houses to new buyers who began to eject the tenants despite several letters by the Federal Ministry of Housing and Urban Development insisting that as the owners of the estate, PIPC had no right to eject the tenants. Documents show that the ministry had in letters written to PIPC in 2006, 2007 and 2009 directed the non-ejection of the original allotees from their property and warned against selling of those properties without giving the tenants the first option of purchase. It also asked that PIPC formally accounts for all the rents collected from the estate since 1977 to the Federal Housing Authority.
But PIPC had insisted that it had taken possession of the estate since 2002 and so had reallocated the properties, a situation the federal ministry said was a breach of the guideline for the allocation of the houses. Available documents show that the ministry had in November, 2009 written to the Federal Housing Authority to call the attention of PIPC that its deviation from the original guideline set by the federal government would lead to a withdrawal of the management rights given to it. Despite the letter, the tenants claim PIPC had remained unmoved while they have continued to be homeless.
However, the Chairman of PIPC’s Technical Board, and former Secretary to the State government, Ezekiel Gomos said the matter between PIPC and the tenants had been settled long ago by the Supreme Court in favour of PIPC. 
One of the affected tenants, Joseph Ajola Ogbemi, speaking on behalf of other tenants, told Daily Trust that their quarrel now is with the Federal Ministry of Power, Works and Housing which he said has continued to display incapability to take decisive action against the management of PIPC “which in defiance of authority has succeeded in ejecting 107 allottees from occupation in the federal Low Cost Housing Estate.”
Ogbemi also accused PIPDC of ejecting mainly non indigenes of the state and selling their houses to top political and office holders in the state and called on the minister to urgently reinstate the ejected tenants, adding that “unless this is done, it would be ironical that the minister is now requesting the Plateau State Governor to allocate land to enable his ministry build another Federal Housing Estate in Jos, while those unjustly ejected from the Federal Low Cost have continued to be homeless.”  When Daily Trust visited the housing section of the Ministry of Power, Works and Housing for comment, our reporters were told that the housing estate was being handled by Federal Housing Authority. But at the FHA, the reporter was also told that the housing wing of the ministry has been in charge of the issue as there have been correspondences between them and the evicted tenants over the issue.