… Says Housing Should Be An Enforceable Human Right

Civil rights advocacy group, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, (HURIWA) on Tuesday, slammed the Federal Capital Territory Administration led by the FCT Minister, Mohammed Musa Bello, over the rash demolitions of allegedly approved structures in Abuja by the authority.

HURIWA also condemned the practice of throwing the poor outside the streets with no option of resettlement or some forms of compensations to help them obtain alternative places of abodes like human beings that they are. 

HURIWA, in a statement by its National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, said it understands that government is obliged to prevent environmental issues like floods caused by the undue blockage of water channels by some unscrupulous house developers without any forms of government’s approval, but it faulted the government for callousness taking people’s roofs from their head, noting that the Mimister should eradicate what it calls ‘perennial virus of wickedness’ in some of the enforcers of housing and city planning laws because some staff of FCTA lack empathy by failing to provide an alternative for relocation for hundreds of Abuja residents.

HURIWA said Abuja is the only place in the World whereby those who have government privileges to loot public funds erect out-of-this World mansions in the city centres that are unoccupied but almost 65% of civil servants and teachers working even for the FCT Ministry live in Nasarawa or Niger States from where they commune to work daily.

“When poor masses can’t find affordable accommodation they are prkne to falling victims of fraudsters who build makeshift huts on government unapproved lands and when the officials come for demolitions they are treated like animals rather than as victims of dupes and 419 house owners who most time bribe FCTA staff to look the other way for few months before striking when the unfortunate victims have settled in”. 

The group also said it was saddening that some of buildings demolished by the FCTA were done for alleged political reasons.

According to news reports, the FCTA had last week demolished a building belonging to Kpokpogri, an ex-lover to actress Tonto Dikeh, at Guzape in Abuja. The structure is estimated at over N700m.

Although the FCTA claimed that Kpokpogri’s house was built on a major highway, hence the demolition, HURIWA noted that the demolition might not be unconnected to political persecution as alleged by the victim of the demolition and incidentally his estranged girlfriend Miss. Dikeh has since taken to social media to mock her ex-lover over his loss for what she considers to be KARMA at work. 

It is also on record that Dikeh, in October 2021, had allegedly used her connection to the late Deputy Inspector General of Police, Joseph Egbunike, to settle scores with Kpokpogri at the Transcorp Hilton Hotel in Abuja.

The then DIG and Tonto herself denied these allegations as crooked and unsubstantiated.

But the man Kpokpogri said a government official had begged him to sell the house but he refused. These allegations remained unproven anyway. 

Aside from the demolition of Kpokpogri’s house, the FCTA also recently demolished over 300 structures in a densely populated Bassa-Jiwa village, near the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja.

Most of the affected structures were residential buildings, shanties, batchers and kiosks around the Village, off the Airport road.

This particular exercise lawful as it is, could have been carried with a little of human feelings such as providing alternatives to these unfortunate and less privileged Nigerians. 

Reacting, HURIWA’s Onwubiko said, “The rash of demolitions in Abuja by the Federal Capital Territory Administration is somehow condemnable and a little bit irrational for lacking human empathy.

“The consequences on human habitations in Abuja and of course the possibility that it will lead to a shoot up of costs of living in the FCT is so appalling. 

“With these demolitions it means hundreds of thousands of residents will be driven further into absolute poverty. This is why the FCT needs to have made adequate alternative arrangements before demolition of these shanties so these people who are thrown out of the streets will have affordable accommodation because many amongst them are victims and not collaborators with those land grabbers. 

“The other aspect is that a lot of corruption trails these demolitions like the allegations by Kpokpogri that his house was demolished because FCT officials wanted to buy it from him send he refused to sell. This needs to be investigated. 

“The unfortunate thing for Abuja residents is that the National Assembly members are also part of the landlords in FCT oppressing the poor and workers who can’t afford houses in the metropolis and so these politicians somehow find a way of displacing the poor people. The effort by the National Assembly to legislate costs of housing to compel landlords to charge tenants per Monthly basis has been undermined by most of them the legislators who are landlords and there is the need for this legislation to be reinvented and passed. 

“There is the need to monitor the FCTA to be sure that the reasons given for demolitions are actually accurate and not just made up tales by moonlight.

“In South Africa and India, right to housing is an enforceable human right and there is no way that such a critical aspect of human right is criminally neglected in Nigeria”, HURIWA said.