By Omeiza Ajayi, Abuja

Residents of Trademore Estate, a sprawling community along the Abuja airport way, have slammed the Federal Capital Territory Administration FCTA over reported plans to evacuate them, following the declaration of the estate as a “disaster zone” by the Permanent Secretary in the FCTA, Mr Olusade Adesola.

At a news conference Monday in Abuja, Chairman of the resident association, Adewale Adenaike explained that the estate was built in 2007 when the Abuja Municipal Area Council AMAC was in charge of land allocation.

He said it was deeply concerning that government would situate polling units within the estate for the purposes of elections but would then turn around to declare the area a disaster zone.

“The estate got the necessary allocation papers and approval from AMAC accordingly. When the FCTA took over, all land allottees were requested to come for recertification which the developer did at the time. No single allottee on airport road has been recertified till date. How then is the land illegal? Going by this narrative of the FCTA it means there is no legal estate on the entire airport road in Abuja which is preposterous.

“90 Percent of the houses in the estate are on mortgage, financed by the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria. Would the Federal Mortgage Bank have given NHF loans to individuals to buy houses without verifying the authenticity of the land title?

“The Nigeria Police Force bought 100 units of houses in the estate. Would they have done that without investigating the genuineness of the land title?

“The commissioning of the units of the Nigerian Police Force in the estate was done by the then Vice President of Nigeria – Architect Namadi Sambo. Would the Vice President of the country have commissioned an illegal estate while in office?

“Trademore estate alone has over three polling units. When votes are taken from here it is not illegal. When we pay tenement rates, land charges and other numerous taxes to the same FCTA, we are not illegal. Now that time has come for them to provide stormwater infrastructure, they have declared our estate illegal.

“These are questions that the lazy civil servants in the FCT administration need to answer for the world to know the truth of what is going on. Trademore Estate is NOT illegal, and it is not a “disaster zone”. Rather, what we have is a disaster leadership in the FCTA who are too shy to think and too lazy to carry out their primary responsibility.

“What we need is the implementation of the already provided solutions to the flooding. Not the easy blame game that the FCT administration is trying to play here.

“We recommend as follows; The dam at Aleita needs to be evaluated. 

“The three culverts commencing from Ecological road culvert after Trademore which currently have an average width of 9.0M should be expanded to a minimum of 15.0M. 

“The channel after Trademore needs to be expanded, properly channeled and dredged.

“Ecological Fund Office construction defect at Trademore 2nd gate entrance as water is channeled down to Trademore gate with very little culvert to take it out. The culvert needs to be widened by Ecological funds office.

“Finally, the critical culvert at the airport express road should be evaluated. A three cell round culvert cannot take out the volume of water from nine districts flowing through Trademore Estate without a back feed. Development Control has failed to look into the real causes of the flood but rather chose the last option of demolishing houses as first and only option to create humanitarian problems and increase the numbers of internally displaced people within FCT,

“We believe that the option of demolition is not the solution to the recent flooding in the Estate. However, we know that in creating waterways, some houses may give way such as was executed last year 2022 which never solved the problem. The indiscriminate manner at which houses are marked and the present statement of threat that over 150 houses in Trademore must go gives cause for concern”.