Wike pulls down estate over infractions

The Federal Capital Territory Administration FCTA in Monday pulled down a section of an estate, Citiscape Villa, in the highbrow Guzape District for violating its building code and building in waterways.

Coordinator, Abuja Metropolitan Management Council AMMC, Chief Felix Obuah who personally led enforcement officials to the site, accused the developer of converting waterways and green areas and selling same to unsuspecting subscribers.

Noting that the developer grossly violated the building approval, Obuah said the FCT Minister, Nyesom Wike will not allow anyone to sabotage developmental efforts in the city.

According to him, any government official found culpable in the illegal deals with the developers would be punished in line with extant civil service rules.

On his part, the Director, Department of Development Control, Mukhtar Galadima said the developer refused to heed the stop work notices served on him.

Galadima disclosed that the enforcement team has doubled its monitoring activities to properly check encroachment and infractions from developers.

The developer and owner of Citiscape Villa, Guzape, Kadiri Ogbaidi admitted to have violated the approval given to him by the Department of Development Control, but pushed the blame to subscribers who he said encroached into the green areas.

He said; “ You know it is an estate, so we have approval for the entire estate. But there have been many infractions here, mostly from our subscribers, who we are responsible for. So, we won’t deny any wrongdoing. We take responsibility.

“We will remove every infraction here as specified by the authority. And we will take them out ourselves. We will bear the cost. So, we just appeal that the authority should allow us at least two weeks. We will start breaking them down. We will take them down ourselves. We have been law-abiding, and we never had issues with the authority before”.