A civil rights advocacy group, the Human rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), has alerted the Federal Government on a massive distortion of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Abuja Master Plan by its current administration of Mohammed Bello and urged President Muhammadu Buhari and the leadership of the National Assembly to intervene.

It called for the setting up of a judicial review commission to look into the status of the master plan to ascertain the veracity or otherwise of groundswell of allegations “sent to us as petitions by interested stakeholders.”

In a press statement by Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, National Coordinator and Miss Zainab Yusuf, National Director of Media Affairs, HURIWA said: “There is therefore the need for the National Assembly to set up a joint investigative Committee on the violations of the environmental master plan of FCT by the FCT administration and also for the President to set up a Judicial Commission of Inquiry on the same matter.

“If the Minister is found culpable, he should be fired, arrested and prosecuted. The investigations should be open, transparent and participatory so Abuja people can be allowed to submit and defend their memoranda.”

Highlighting the issue, HURIWA said: “In the process of establishing a new capital at Abuja, a master plan was put in place. However, the master plan was abused. This resulted in Abuja urbanization, environmental development disarray, slums and housing inadequacy.

“Nasir El-Rufai (former FCT Minister) did his bit by trying to restore the master plan of Abuja but it has come to our notice that there is an ongoing violations of the master plan of Abuja under the current Minister of the FCT, Mohammed Bello, who has no plan whatsoever other than to allegedly enrich his friends and allies by trading on Abuja land purportedly.

“Abuja lands are now reportedly been graded off for political patronage and the environmental impact of these gross deviations from the esteemed master plan by the current administration have started manifesting in a huge scale in such a way that the forecasted climate change could be a child's play if the 'governor' of Abuja who is the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and if the parliamentary forum for FCT which is the National Assembly fails to take concrete and verifiable steps to push back these unprecedented abuses of the Abuja master plan by the FCT administration at the moment.

“Although on assumption of office on November 11, 2015, as the Minister of the FCT for his first tenure, Mallam Bello who received Presidential mandate to confront a myriad of challenges among which included near collapse of infrastructure and utilities arising from severe over-stretching, increase in the territory’s population, lack of maintenance culture and bastardisation of the Abuja Master Plan, did nothing worth pointing to as an achievement, but was careful not to do anything that would bring him disrepute.

“Presently, this his second tenure is something different in the sense that the distortion of the Abuja master plan currently going on under his administration is more brazen than those done by previous administrations.

“According to observers, with the way he is going people are beginning to ask if there is still a reference master plan for the development of the Abuja.

“A most noticeable development is that most areas in the city reserved as green area have been allegedly allocated to land speculators and consequently developed under the watch of Mohammed Bello and his director of development control, Muktar Galadima, together with his cabal in the FCT administration. There is currently a lands bazaar in the FCT administration as alleged by observers with considerable knowledge of the political governance of the FCT.

“Again, Katampe, a developing phase 2 district of Abuja city is another reference Point. The layout, which was designed as a low-density residential area in the FCT because it was meant to be developed as a diplomatic zone, serves as one of the highest points in the capital and the geographic midpoint of the nation.

“Perhaps, due to the fact that the neighborhood boasts of good infrastructure, in parts, including electricity, roads and landscaping and most amenities are only but a short distance, a plot in that axis of Abuja goes for as much as N500 million depending on size and location.

“The original layout for this area was done over 20 years ago, but in recent times the FCT Minister have been allegedly signing out fresh allocation on green areas, places marked out for recreational activities and even hilly landscape.

“Due to the high incentive, it is our belief that and estimated of over 500 new plots of land have been signed out by Mohammed Bello in Katampe extension alone,” the statement said.

Stating its position, the group said: “We are constrained to note that the current efforts by the Mohammed Bello-led Ministry of FCT has shown to be a brazen distortion of the Abuja master plan, especially as regards the green areas component of it. It is common knowledge that the development of adequate recreational green areas within the federal capital territory is a key feature of the Abuja master plan.

“Going by the strict provisions of the master plan, the city is to be developed in phases on an area of about 250 square kilometers. The total land area for the phase 1 of the city is about 70706 hectares. Out of this, about 1260 hectares is reserved for green development. This includes open spaces, recreational facilities, parks, gardens, children play grounds, outdoor games, sport centres, national and district/neighbourhood parks.

“Others are green stretches along valleys, river-birds, hilly patches and some incidental open spaces. The current state of affairs bears eloquent testimony to the sorry pass Abuja green areas have come to.

“Take for instance the pathetic status of Kubwa that does not boast of any meaningful recreational facility and/or designated green areas; and tragically, it does appear that same fate is about befalling all other satellite towns, even though our legitimate expectation is that the honorable minister would refrain from permitting a repeat of this anomaly.

“Under the current administration, the master plan seems to have been so mindlessly violated that what the city can boast of currently as green areas is indeed a mockery of what the International Planning Associates (IPA), designers of the capital city envisaged in the master plan and the report they submitted to the federal government in 1979.

“To be sure, the brazen conversion of green areas by relevant authorities to commercial and residential purposes in alleged collusion with the Minister; Mohammad Bello, his Director of Development Control, Galadima Muktar, together with his cabal in the FCT administration’s unrestrained encroachment and reckless subdivision of land and partitioning of green areas in flagrant breach of the master plan have combined to ridicule the very neighbourhood concept of the master plan, thereby questioning the wisdom in naming Abuja the nation’s capital.

“Observably, it is clear that the National Assembly's committees on FCT are pocketed by the FCT Authority. We challenge them to prove us wrong because every residents of Abuja are already feeling the impacts of the political compromise they have reached with the officials of the FCT administration which is why Abuja now stinks of refuse dumps in all conceivable places and the infrastructural decays are emerging at very speedy rates.

“Abuja will grow into a model city if the Abuja urban actors would coordinate and properly execute the Master Plan and the development laws, integrated into a coordinated programme that would take advantage of urban development principles and create the much-needed environment for the inhabitants,” HURIWA noted.