BY JOHNBOSCO AGBAKWURU & JOSEPH ERUNKE

ABUJA—Efforts aimed at creating an agency saddled with responsibility of developing satelite towns in the Federal Capital Territory,FCT, received the support of Senate yesterday, as a bill to that effect scaled second reading.

The bill titled: A Bill for an Act to Establish the Federal Capital Territory Satelite Town Development Agency and for other Related Matters 2013, sponsored by the Chairman, Senate Committee on FCT, Senator Smart Adeyemi, PDP, Kogi West,seeks to enhance the socio-economic well-being of the people living in the rural areas.

Defending the need for the agency in his lead debate, Senator Adeyemi said no city “functions effectively while independent of its regional areas.”

Noting that the FCT covers an area of 8,000 square kilometer, Adeyemi stressed that the demographic studies put the population of Abuja’s urban as of 2012, at 2,245,000,thus making it the fourth largest urban area in the country.