Provision of infrastructure is a major requirement for adequate housing. It is well known that one of the major prevailing predicaments in the FCT Administration is the absence of funds for the provision of infrastructure to the many planned districts in the city, in which land allocations were fully made. Presently, only primary infrastructures are provided in some of the districts, without the secondary. In many others, none at all. Ideally, this contradicts standard practice.
Thus to introduce a new policy that would lead to massive housing development without any arrangement for the provision of infrastructure would be akin to providing tea without sugar. Accordingly, the authorities would provide the primary infrastructure that leads to the individual mass housing estates, while the developers would provide the secondary infrastructure which includes the networks of roads, electricity, water and others to serve the various housing units in their housing estates. That was made part of the condition for the allocation.
Also, it is illegal for any mass housing developer to engage in the practice of selling the land. What is required is for the selling of the built houses as a product of the allocation. Unfortunately, some unscrupulous developers, who applied and secured the mass housing allocations, and with the full knowledge of their incapacity to meet up with the conditions, would illegally parcel the big land into smaller plots, even without the provision of the infrastructure and commence selling to individuals.
There are others that would secure the allocations and later commence the process of conversion to obtain the Right of Occupancy. They were fully aware ab-initio, that such conversion would not be allowed.
The actualisation of the issuance of the Certificates of Occupancy to the end users is subject to compliance with the necessary procedures by the developers. These include the evidence of obtaining building plan approval from the authority prior to the commencement of the project and ensuring the implementation without any violation.
All off-takers or subscribers to mass housing units must ensure that this condition is met by the developer before they start depositing their hard-earned funds. This information becomes very necessary, because many informal vendors are now parading housing products for sale along the traffic, on many major junctions around the city.
Certainly, many developers would have obtained the necessary approvals before the project commencement, but most of the mass housing subscribers are not aware that the developer’s responsibility does not end with the handing over their houses at the end of the construction. The developer would subsequently submit the list of the individual house owners to the authority for the issuance of Certificate of Occupancy to them. It is the right of the house owners to ensure that the developer makes the submission of the list to the authority for the commencement of the process.
As earlier stated, the transaction for buying a mass housing plot, not the built house is illegal. But, if made anyhow, the cost should be much less than that of a statutory allocation. This is for the benefit of genuine developers, who would like to buy from some characters that applied and got the allocations for speculation, despite the illegality.
In the absence of the desirable, the available becomes desirable. The genuine developers should be guided against any deceit that would extort heavy amount from them, instead of much less.
Sometime in March 2012, we brought up instances of violations of many land uses, such as District Parks, Markets and Secondary Schools that were wrongly allocated for mass housing developments. Also, instances abound, where the developers subdivided the mass housing allocations, and sold to subscribers to build the houses themselves. Yet, the developer would continue to claim ownership of the estate, with further imposition of purported levies for the provision of infrastructure and the estate management.
Threats of revocation would be made to the subscribers upon refusal to comply with such illegal impositions. Due to the desperation in owning houses, the gluttonous developer would surreptitiously sell the subdivided land to another anxious subscriber. Thus, double or triple interest would be maliciously created on a single piece of land. It is important to know that there are avenues for laying complaints, and necessary sanctions would be imposed by the Metropolitan Management Council against the developers that have the habit of extorting money from their subscribers or off-takers.
As with any type of land allocation anywhere, conditions are attached for the allocation, for the purposes of attainment of the desired objectives. In order to be back on track what is required is strict compliance with the mass housing policy as contained in the FCT Mass Housing Development Guidelines.
Also, there should be compliance with the Abuja City Land Use, density of plots with their required family sizes and building design requirements as stipulated in the development control manual, which clearly spells out the actual rules and regulations of plot development.
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