FCT Minister Urges Action on Implementation of Abuja Masterplan

FCT Minister Urges Action on Implementation of Abuja Masterplan

By Olawale Ajimotokan

The FCT Minister, Muhammad Musa Bello has tasked all the stakeholder departments dealing with land matters in the Federal Capital Territory to immediately resolve all associated problems that impinge the full implementation of the Abuja Master Plan.

He issued the directive at the commissioning ceremony of the Accelerated Area Council Sectional Title Re-Issuance Scheme (AACSTRIS) and AGIS Data Centre recently.

He reiterated the need for all the departments and agencies of the FCT Administration to resolve all outstanding issues and problems that have hindered the smooth execution of the AACSTRIS project for over a decade.

Bello stated that AACSTRIS must be reaped to enable the FCT Administration to provide the needed infrastructure for development of the territory because it has funds that are locked down and which can be used to improve the revenue base of the FCT through the payment of premium, ground rents, and other sundry charges.

“Land title owners across the Area Councils and homeowners in many estates and mass housing schemes in the FCT can now fully benefit from their real estate investments as regularised titles would be issued statutory Rights of Occupancy and subsequently, Certificates of Occupancy, which are bankable instruments,” he said.

The minister urged staff in the relevant land departments to eschew any act of corruption capable of hindering the implementation of the project.

Also speaking at the occasion, the Director of the Abuja Geographic Information Systems (AGIS), Dr. Isa Ibrahim Jalo, said the AACSTRIS project has been established to process over 10,000 backlogs of pending applications for the regularisation of the Area Council land titles from customary to statutory.

He added that AACSTRIS also aimed to process over 30,000 and 10,000 title documents for the mass housing estates as well as multi-dwelling houses littered across FCT by providing them bankable titles in line with the global best practices.

Jalo said in order to hit the ground running, the Department of Urban and Regional Planning has vetted 302 layouts that will immediately be processed into the AGIS database after meeting all requirements while it has also evaluated over 700 titles which are expected to ease the transformation of the title documents from customary to statutory.

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