ABUJA - MINISTER of Housing and Urban Development, Mrs. Alice Mobolaji Osomo has faulted the recent statement credited to the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai that all Certificates of Occupancy (C of O) in respects of land titles ever issued by the Ministry of Federal Capital Territory should be revoked.
Mrs Osomo who made the remark yesterday during the 2004 National Ministerial Briefing to mark the one anniversary of the creation of the ministry, stated the Mallam El-Rufai’s position on the revocation the C of O was not only irrelevant, but “has caused confusion and distraction in the housing industry.”
She said the statement has generated a lot of controversy everywhere and especially in the housing industry, where many people were believed to have used such document as collateral to secure loans or funds from banks or other financial institutions. Her words “the revocation of C of O, I have read about it and I thought I will have a close dialogue with my counterpart in the FCT because there is a lot of implications in that and it has caused in the housing industry, even in the area where the C of Os were used as collateral for the security of loans”. “It has caused confusion everywhere, and I am sure we are going to have a close dialogue with him and I do not think the public should panic about that. I think all will be sorted out in due course”.
The minister who berated the management of the Federal Capital Development Authority (FCDA) for not living up to expectations in the areas of visitation to new site with the purpose of identification of green plots at beginning, only to wait till such projects are completed and third party is involved before they carry out demolition.
Chief Osomo tasked the FCDA officials to wake up from their present slumber, urging them to go around to monitor new developing areas in order to avoid demolition of completed building which a lot of money would have been put into.
Reacting to questions on where Mallam El-Rufai described the FHA property at Lugbe as illegal structure, she said, “both the FHA and the FCDA are the statutory organizations of the Federal Government, they are owned under the same father. There is no doubt that the job of FCDA is to do a master plan. Any property that is acquired by FHA in developing an estate must get an approval. In the planning of the houses you must go to FCDA and get everything from start before you kick off. If FCDA as the administrator of the land in FCT sees that there is a contravention going on, they should not wait until full estate has been developed, other people have taken an interest that they will now turn out and said that something has gone wrong.”
