The House of Representatives has moved a motion to end the land encroachment on the premises of the Federal Government Boys College Apo and LGEA Primary School, Uye, Abuja
The motion was moved during the budget defence by the by the Federal Capital Territory Administration, FCTA before the Orker Jev led House of Representatives Committee on the Federal Capital Territory, FCT.
Moving the motion, Timothy Golu ( PDP, Plateau) suggested that the House Committee and Management of the FCTA should visit the place for first hand information and to take appropriate actions.
“If you go LGEA Uye, you will discover a very pathetic situation. I have taken my time to go there, we were there with Chairman House Committee on Area Councils we try to draw the attention of the Chairman of SUBEB, I don’t know whether the request has reached your office.
“There is a serious matter there because if you go there every District is suppose to have a school and then Uye is supposed to be suitably cited there. If you go there you will discover the land belongs to FGBC Apo.
“I don’t know why that place is housing LGEA Uye and the land there about 60% of it has been taken over by individuals. Almost evert time you see people taking over the land. I don’t know who is allocating the land. It is supposed to belong to those two schools.
“Mr. Chairman if you can lead us there, I know that the Minister intervention will come in. It is serious issue, I will move a motion . We should visit that place together with the Minister and the Permanent Secretary to see and intervention should be done immediately”, he stated.
In his debate Jonathan Gaza (PDP, Nasarawa) questioned the exclusion of the road linking Apo and Karshi in the 2019 budget and asked the Minister to extend priority to Abaji and Gwagwalada areas for overall development of Abuja.
“Going through the budget priority has been paid to Satellite towns of Kubwa, Karshi, Bwari, no mention has been made of places like Abaji, Gwagwalada.
“Secondly, I appreciate the fact that you are giving priority to satellite towns and I request that more priority be given to such areas and the very obvious project that is excluded here which is the road that is going to link Apo and Karshi.
“I want to know what the details are and lastly, taken cue from what happened in 2018 can you please tell this honourable House the projects you are going to prioritize.
Muhammad Bello, FCT Minister while responding promised to take up the issues raised by the Committee, particularly saying the Apo – Karshi link road was delayed due to the difficulty of engineering services but that has been handled and work will soon begin.
On the 2018 budget, Bello said, ” in the year 2018, the FCT was appropriated the sum of N 32.298 billion for its budget. To date, a total of N 9.689 billion was released to the FCTA in two tranches of N 3.229 billion and N 6.459 billion and have been fully utilized representing budget performance of 30%”.
For the 2019 budget, he stated that, “the sum of N 30. 704 billion was given to the FCT as its National Priority Budget Budget Capital Envelope for the 2019 fiscal year”. This according to details submitted 30 infrastructural projects.
James Kwen, Abuja
