MINISTER of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Malam Muhammad Musa Bello, has charged ministries and agencies that have lands allocated to them under the FCT master-plan to come forward to regularise such parcels of land by processing their titles.
The minister said this was one way of safeguarding such titles against encroachment or inadvertent reallocation.
Bello made this call when his Ministry of Interior counterpart, Lt-Gen. Abdulrahman Danbazzau, paid him a courtesy visit in Abuja.
He said his administration was working to recover all lands in Abuja that were originally designated for ministries and agencies in the Abuja master plan but were unwittingly allocated for other purposes in the FCT.
“With respect to allocation of land to Ministry of Interior and many other ministries that are not housed in the main secretariat, we are working at the areas at the Ahmadu Bello and Shehu Shagari ways, especially trying to identify land within the designated areas that were originally meant for Ministries but over the years were inadvertently allocated for other purposes. Wherever it is practical and possible, we will try to recover these lands,” he stated.
The minister also indicated that the FCT administration was also trying to revive the project for the expansion of the Federal Secretariat to provide befitting office accommodation for other ministries that were not housed in the main secretariat.
“Again, there is a project that was commenced many years ago as an expansion of the Federal Secretariat which apparently has been stopped. We will look at it also. We will look at numerous options to be able to see that we are able to get proper office accommodation for the Ministry of Interior and one or two others, including Ministry of Agriculture,” he promised.
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Earlier, General Danbazau urged the FCT administration to have a look at the small markets that were springing up around the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camps in the FCT, saying some of the markets had been turned to platforms for sale of dangerous and prohibited drugs.
“Some of them will claim they are IDPs from the Northeast; of course, there is the need for us to accommodate these displaced persons but we have to do it in a way that it does not have negative consequences on security. I thought I should seize this opportunity to bring it up so that we can put heads together and know precisely how to deal with the situation,” he said.
Speaking on the Old Secretariat building housing his Ministry of Interior, Danbazzau said, the ministry was looking for a befitting area to erect a new ministry secretariat that would reflect the image and importance of the ministry.
The ministry, he said warehouses the five major paramilitary organisations charged with the responsibility of maintaining the internal security and public safety in the country, hoping that they should be properly accommodated to perform their functions effectively.
“We’ve tried everything we can do on our own to renovate the old building. We have carried out an extension from the main building with the permission of the FCTA, which we are still working on. Still it’s an area that we thought we should be able to relocate. We want to make that request for land for a new secretariat,” he said.