FCT justifies N300,000 relocation fees for mechanic village occupants

The request for N300,000 to relocate artisans from the Apo Mechanic Village to Wasa in the Federal Capital Territory has been explained by Felix Obuah, Coordinator of the Abuja Metropolitan Management Council.

The agreed N300,000 amount, according to Obuah, is a non-refundable land registration cost for the ongoing trade relocation effort on the area's road corridors. It also serves as a deterrent to "ghost names" from submitting an application.

At a stakeholders' meeting on Thursday, the AMMC Coordinator provided traders with updates on the site plan, suggested design, and enumeration exercise, among other topics.

However, he claimed that certain questionable union leaders threatened to charge the mechanics and artisans up to N1 million for the relocation form, threatening to ensure that security agents arrest such persons falsely allocating lands to unsuspecting traders who were not on the road corridor where, who are the original beneficiaries of the exercise.

Obuah disclosed that so far, 11,000 individuals have registered for the relocation exercise.

“As I speak to you, over 11,000 people have collected the registration forms. We put it at N300,000. We try to put this in to make sure that many people who are ghost names will not even apply in the first place. But as of today, over 11,000 have paid, That’s not enough”.
The government is currently collecting N300,000, but many people are even utilising this as 419, going to the back and collecting more N650,000. People are in a precarious situation. I came to inform them this is what we are doing for that reason. The AMMC Coordinator said, "I will support them through every step of the process, and whoever is given this shop will be published at the end."

Although he acknowledged the challenges he had when interacting with the traders, he pointed out that more than 45,000 names were initially supplied by several unions, characterising such lists as exaggerated.

According to the AMMC Coordinator, the Council had to physically enumerate the potential impacted traders due to the blotted names and other untrue allegations.

"In actuality, the meeting was intended to brief them on how far we have gone with the arrangement of relocating them to Wasa. So, we invited the stakeholders of Apo traders, mainly all the association heads, to brief them on how far we have gone, the essence of the enumeration, the essence of the form and how many people have paid and what next, we intend to do”.

“It is purely for those of them in the road corridor and those of them in the buffer areas, as these forms are not meant for people who are not along the corridor. I have discovered that most of them have gone as far as collecting money from people who are not having business to do with Apo, just because they want to grab land especially some of them who have money”, he stated.

Obuah also declared that the exercise would be concluded before the end of the month, Obuah, noting that, “the plan to relocate the traders that have suffered a different set back since 25 years ago would be concluded by this administration”.

“Rumour has it that those shops have been given out to government officials, to girlfriends and brothers, but I was able to make it plain to all of them, not even one, and the minister is not interfering”, he added.