Buhari: Revoked Abuja land not mine

Former President Muhammadu Buhari says he is not the owner of the plot of land revoked by the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) in Abuja, the nation’s capital.

Reports had earlier emerged that the FCTA revoked land titles belonging to Buhari; the former Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Walter Onnoghen; the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, George Akume; the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Tajudeen Abbas; and the Kaduna State Governor, Uba Sani.

Buhari, while reacting via a statement issued by his spokesman, Garba Shehu, on Thursday, December 19, 2024, said he is not the owner of the revoked land, adding that he has only a plot of land in Abuja.

Shehu stated: “President Buhari is personally not the owner of the said plot of the land which is allocated in the name a ‘Muhammadu Buhari Foundation’.

“The Foundation was itself floated by some utilitarian individuals around him who, it must said, went about it in a lawful manner with the support of a number of well-meaning persons.

“But they ran into a roadblock in the land department of the FCDA which handed them an outrageous bill for the issuance of the certificate of occupancy, very high in cost that did not at all compare with the bills given to similar organizations.

“It may have been that this was not erroneous, but a deliberate mistake, making the revocation of land as no surprise to anyone.

“As a person, the former president has a plot of land to his name in Abuja.

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“When he and his cabinet members were invited to fill the forms and obtain land during his tenure in office, he returned the form without filling it, saying that he already had a plot of land in the FCT, that those who did not have should be given. He, therefore, turned down the offer.

“So please let all those jumping up and down in the digital space talking about the rightfulness or the lack of it on the reported seizure of Buhari’s land in Abuja get their facts right, and stop dragging down the name of the former president.”

It would be recalled that the FCTA in October threatened to revoke the Certificates of Occupancy of plots of land owned by prominent individuals and corporate organisations in Abuja.

The administration in October issued a two-week ultimatum to landowners in the Maitama district of Abuja, to settle outstanding payments for their C of O or risk losing their property rights.

In two notices published by the FCTA on Thursday, the administration revoked the ownership of 762 plots of land in the highbrow Maitama District over non-payment of statutory fees, adding that the affected persons also failed to pay for their C-of-O documents for the seized plots.

The FCTA also threatened to withdraw the Rights of Occupancy of 614 other individuals and companies, if they failed to pay outstanding bills for their plots within two weeks.

The Star