The accidental public servant – TRIBUTE (I)

While on a routine inspection tour as the District Site Officer on July 14, 1999, I noticed the commencement of work on plot number 598 Central Area District. I immediately suspected that there was violation of development regulations, because setting out approval was not granted. I immediately issued a Stop Work Notice. The Central Area […]

While on a routine inspection tour as the District Site Officer on July 14, 1999, I noticed the commencement of work on plot number 598 Central Area District. I immediately suspected that there was violation of development regulations, because setting out approval was not granted. I immediately issued a Stop Work Notice. The Central Area is the most sensitive and most challenging District in development control activities in Abuja. I was controlling another district much earlier before my abrupt swap to the District, only two months prior to this encounter.
The following day, our deputy director was late to the office. I later learned that she was summoned to the headquarters in connection with the work I stopped the previous day. As soon as she arrived, she called and asked me the reasons for my action. It was then that I realised that I have stepped on a very mighty toe. Luckily, my report was ready and I immediately submitted.
She read my report and wrote her comment. Due to the sensitivity of the matter, instead of calling the messenger, she handed over the file to me with a very stern instruction, that I should immediately hand over the file directly to the then acting director. The comment she made to my report was: “The officer acted rightly by stopping the work, and if the developer refuses to comply we shall serve him with demolition notice.” Such was Jummai Kwanashie’s way of encouraging her staff. She can support her staff anywhere, so long as he or she is right.
After submitting the file as instructed, there was no further directive. However, when I noticed that our Stop Work Notice was not complied with, I discharged my responsibility, by serving a Demolition Notice to the developer, two weeks later, precisely on July 28, 1999. That was our limit then, because the Development Control was a Division under the Land, Planning and Survey Department and can effect demolition only when it got approval from the above, which we did not receive. Thus, to our dismay, we watched how the illegal development on plot number 598 A0, which was earmarked for a night school according to the Abuja Master Plan, became annex to Bolingo Hotel.
Subsequently, on September 25, 2000, during another routine inspection exercise, I saw a fence construction work around plot 599, being undertaken by the Bolingo Hotel management, with the intention of further annexing to the hotel. Plot 599 is a service corridor, meant for accommodation of infrastructural services. Again, I stopped the work, and went further to explain the impracticability of the development to the Site Engineer and the MD/CE by showing them the layout on my official cadastral sheet. I was stunned by the outburst of insults against my person that emanated from the MD/CE whom I was meeting for the first time. It was then that I realised that the man took my earlier official activity on plot 598 as personal affront against him, and was waiting for a direct encounter with me. To further intimidate me, he called his wife who was then a minister of the federal republic who met us on the spot. He claimed that the service corridor in question was officially allocated to him.
Upon my return to the office, I submitted a report. Henceforth, due to the inevitable interruption the fencing work shall cause on the implementation of future infrastructural services in the vicinity of the area, approval was granted for the removal of the fence, which was carried out the following day.
Under the sub heading: ‘Chief Igweh Comes Calling’, in chapter 11 of The Accidental Public Servant, the Memoirs of Malam Nasir el-Rufa’i, the former FCT minister wrote: “Bolingo Hotel and Towers obtained the building plan approval for the development of a hotel on Plot 598 in 1996. Bolingo had since then had series of confrontations with, including physical assault on staff of the Development Control Department, due to various development control contraventions”.
Earlier, at the beginning, el-Rufa’i stated:“One of the earliest challenges we faced in restoring the Abuja Master Plan was a confrontation with a leading politician and businessman now deceased, Chief J. U Igweh, the owner of the Bolingo Hotel in Abuja. Chief Igweh was a very close business and political associate of Vice President Atiku Abubakar, a leading member of the PDP and reputedly one of the party’s original godfathers in the southeast. His case was typical of many influential Nigerians who wanted things done their way without regard to the rules.” The foregoing was the prelude to the physical assault referred to in the book, The Accidental Public Servant. It took place on Tuesday, September 26, 2000, when the fence was removed.
To be continued.