The Minister of Lands, Housing and Urban development, Mr. Nduese Essien, said his ministry has initiated a proposal to make owners of unoccupied houses in Federal Housing Authority (FHA) estates to pay a levy for as long as the houses remain unoccupied.

Essien disclosed this recently, in Abuja, during a visit to one of the Federal Government Housing schemes in Gwarinpa 11, noting that such unoccupied houses have become security risks in the FCT because they serve as a hide out for criminals.

He lamented that while many Nigerians have no access to comfortable houses, there are houses lying all over Gwarimpa estate which should be made available to those that need them. “I will also want to comment on the part that there are a large number of houses in Gwarimpa estate that are not presently occupied.

It appears that some people have bought them on speculative reasons, keeping them to sell at a higher rate or wanting to rent them at rates that are too high for the population to take.

“These houses have become security risk in the estate, because they serve as hide out for criminals; therefore the Ministry is considering addressing this situation, we are going to propose that houses that are not occupied the owners should be made to pay a levy as long as the houses are not occupied, hoping that the levy will serve as a deterrent to further un_occupation of these houses.

It is sad that many Nigerians are not accommodated in comfortable homes, but there are houses lying all over Gwarimpa estate which should be made available to those that need them, so the Ministry is going to bring this proposal and will enforce it so that people who want to buy houses in our estate will have to make sure that they either occupy them or they rent them out at affordable rates.”

In the meantime, the housing minister has directed the FHA to undertake the verification of all lands in government estates across the country with a view to determining the actual plots of available in the estates.

“I want to direct the FHA to undertake verification of the entire land available in Gwarimpa estate to determine the actual number of plots that are available in that estate.

I am ordering this verification, because I am aware that the plots that are currently there are not what were initially designed; more plots have been created over the years more than the original design.

This exercise will also involve the determination of the houses in the estate; those that have been sold, of the number sold and the number of houses currently occupied.

I want to have the result of this verification before the ending of March, so that from there we can have a full picture of what we have on ground.

“This exercise is not only applicable to Gwarimpa estate, but will be applied to all the estates of the Federal Housing Authority (FHA), because the owner of anything is supposed to have an idea of what he has, but presently we are not sure how many houses are available in our estate throughout the country,” he stated.