By Sarah NEGEDU
The Federal Capital Territory Administration is beaming its searchlight on buildings and estates across the satellite towns, as the department of development control begins post-development audit of Abuja Satellite Towns.
This development, the department said, signals the recommencement of processing and granting of building approvals to already developed satellite towns.
Flagging off the exercise at Dawaki on Tuesday, Director, FCT Department of Development Control, Mukhtar Galadima, said the process will help to generate an efficient data base for sustainable city development.
He explained that the exercise requires that structures built without approval from the authorities will be spared and granted approval if they conform with approved engineering designs while those that do not comform will be removed.
Galadima, noted that the exercise had become necessary owing to the fact that some of the satelite towns lacked engineering designs at the time of development.
He explained that with the engineering designs of the towns now approved, the department will carry out post development audit on all the satellite towns in the territory to assess them and grant those qualified approval.
In his words, “Because of lack of engineering designs in some of these satellite towns, we were asked not to grant approval to some of them. But some have engineering designs now like Dawaki, where we are starting from, so we are commencing the post development audit so that those that built without approval, we can now assess them and grant them approval.
“We have drafted a format where we’re going to divide these settlements into clusters and then the officers have been shared into clusters, they’ll go out, share this format, explain to the owners of these properties the essence of this exercise so that within 21 days we’re expecting the owners of these properties to submit the requisite information that we’re expecting them to do.”
According to him, over 15 satellite towns in the territory will be covered includung Gwagwalada, Kuje, Karshi, Bwari, Kubwa, Abaji, among others.
Galadima appealed to residents to grant officials maximum cooperation because the exercise is for the benefits of all.
“It’s part of FCT law because in FCT you cannot build without approval so if you build without approval, if its something we can approve, we can approve it as built but if its something we cannot approve, we can say sorry, this thing cannot be condoned.
“And again,as a city we need to have a data base for the development taking place in terms of services to be rendered, in terms of proerty taxation, in terms of so many parameters, lets have a data base even for researches people can come and take a research on the process of developing a capital city.
“Now there is new policy in the FCT looking at the new administration direction which requires us to do whatever we can do to put things in order”.