FG May Go Tough on Owners of Unoccupied Buildings in Abuja, Environs

Emmanuel Addeh in Abuja

In the coming days, the federal government may take tough decisions to curb the problem of massive unoccupied buildings in Abuja, especially those that have been uninhabited for over three months.

The Minister of Housing, Ahmed Dangiwa, who spoke when he toured several government housing construction sites in Abuja and Niger, disclosed that henceforth, those who insist on neither living in nor giving out their houses will have their ground rents tripled.

The locations visited by Dangiwa included the Mega City Project at Jibi Village, by Kubwa Express, the Apo-Guzape Housing Project financed by the Federal Housing Authority (FHA), Prototype Housing Scheme, Suleja, Niger State and the Federal Integrated Staff Housing (FISH) programme.

Dangiwa, on the sidelines of the two-day tour, argued that when the ground rent of the several houses and estates in Abuja is tripled, owner would be compelled to give them out to tenants.

The minister stated that the government was about commencing a census of the estates that are not occupied in the capital city as many residents do not even have houses to live in.

“There are lots of abandoned estates, especially in Abuja and the vicinity. I think, in some other states, we do have a few of them. What’s important is that now we want to take stock of all those abandoned houses. Then, we interface with the owners of the abandoned houses.

“We ask them what do you want? Do you want to keep these houses? If you want to keep them unoccupied, the government will charge you triple ground rent instead of the single ground rent that we charge.

“That will force them to put it on rent for whatever amount or sell them off because you can’t keep saying that we have housing deficit and empty houses when we have a lot of empty houses that are being completed and left unoccupied.

“ So, we have told the department of lands and urban and regional planning in our ministry to take stock of those estates and give us the names of the proprietors so that the owners of those estates will be informed of our plans,” he stressed.