After an extensive tour of 30 locations across the country by the Aguda Panel in 1975, Lagos was declared unfit as the nation’s capital and recommended a vast virgin territory in the middle of Nigeria to replace Lagos as the capital of the country. The whole of this vast territory was named Abuja which covers about 8,000 square kilometers.
Based on the recommendation, on the 5th of February 1976 the military government of the late General Murtala Muhammed created the new FCT via Decree No. 6. The decree vested the responsibility of the development of Abuja with the Federal Capital Development Authority (FCDA). FCDA in June 1977 engaged International Planning Association (IPA) from United States to prepare a draft master plan for Abuja and its environs.
According to the design, which provided for a phased development, Abuja was divided into sectors, districts and neighborhoods. It was projected to have a population of 1.6 million after the completion of phase 1 and 3.1 million after the completion of phase 2. Today only phase 1 is completed but the population is above 3.5 million.
Due to the huge rise in population and government’s inability to speedily develop the city to catch up with the rising population, a gap filling policy called Land Swap was initiated.
Land swap initiated by former FCT adminidtration involves the granting of Greenfield lands to competent real estate developers who will in turn provide infrastructure such as roads, electricity, potable water, drainage and communication dots to residents without any financial or technical demand on the government.
With the launch of the N26 billion pilot land swap project in Abuja in Feb. 2015, hopes were rife that by this time, the Federal Capital City (FCC) would have witnessed massive housing and infrastructure transformations.
With land swap, the yoke of commercially viable public infrastructure provision would shift from government’s shoulders to the private sector’s. For instance, the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) has a resettlement and compensation bill of between N55 billion and N60 billion within the area covered in the land swap project which investors were ready to fund. By this time, 15 investors were ready to pay the resettlement and compensation bills for existing indigenous villages, economic trees and crops. After doing all this, the investors were to provide engineering infrastructure.
It is a programme that its lifespan cut across FCT administrations. It was therefore, expected that the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari would further drive the policy. Like it has done with many projects initiated by its predecessor, the current government should have given land swap impetus to be a successful. This should form the fulcrum of The Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP).
The failure of land swap to progress has indeed put investors in dire straits. Already, many of them who committed millions of naira to the project are suffering investor fatigue. Those who took loans are having battles with their debtors.
This setback might be part of the reasons the All Progressives Congress (APC) was rejected in FCT in the general elections on February 23rd 2019. This can be linked to the failure of the present FCT Minister Muhammed Musa Bello’s slow pace of work.
Calls are therefore, made that President Buhari should bring in a more intelligent, reliable, credible and proactive minister that would easily recognise good policies and provide enabling environment for their execution.
FCT as a top-notch planned city needs technocrats with candour, not common politicians to manage it. Only forthright professionals in city management/development can truly move Abuja the next level.
Indeed, not getting this to work has resulted in great losses. The land swap which has been abandoned for over five years would have provided Abuja infrastructure and housing of nothing less than N993.9 billion in the various districts. The initial sum of $2 million which was invested since 2015 has not been utilized. When converted at the current exchange rate, it is approximately $4 million.
Apart from helping government save billions of naira required for district development, land swap has capacity to create numerous skilled jobs and indirect unskilled employments. It can cause employment by secondary investors who will build housing projects, parks, hotels and those who will provide security, power, water, sanitation and other basic amenities. The beauty of the land swap is the multiplier effect of its outcome. If you are building 10 districts under the land swap model, you will be talking of employment of over 500,000 residents. That is on the construction level.
Therefore, revenue will be earned from land registration and titling, and most importantly, property tax and consumption tax. So the federal government is not losing anything by the land swap.
Viewpoint Housing News is of the view that now is time to get this policy working as it has the capacity to unlock the potential of the FCT to become one of the 21st century economic hubs and Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP)