The Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) has lifted the embargo on building plan approvals at satellite towns cut across six Area Councils of the nation's capital. This is to generate an efficient database for sustainable city development Making this disclosure, the Director of the FCT Department of Development Control (DDC), Mukhtar Galadima noted that the Administration suspended granting building plans approvals at the satellite towns, due to the absence of engineering design in the area. More so, stating that the process is aimed at enabling the department to access and grant building approval to those who had built without approval, also property owners in satellite towns are expected to submit the requisite information for necessary action within 21 days.
He said, “What is taking place is a post-development audit of Satellite Towns. You know because of the lack of engineering design in these satellite towns, were asked not to grant approvals to some of them. But, some like Dawaki where we are starting now to have engineering design.
“There are over 15 towns, and when you look at such towns like Gwagwalada, Kuje, Karshi, Bwari, Abaji, etc, we want to cover all the Satellite towns. So, we are commencing the post-development audit, so that those that built without approvals, we can now assess them, and grant them such approvals.”
“We have drafted a format where we are going to divide these settlements into clusters, and the officers have been distributed into the clusters, as they will go out and share the format and explain it to the owners of the built property, letting them know the essence of the exercise.
“Within 21 days, we are expecting the owners of the property to submit the requisite information that is expected of them for necessary action. “It is in line with the extant laws because, in FCT, you cannot build without approval, so if you have built without approval, the best way to go is to furnish us with the necessary information within the stipulated time. If it is something that can be done, we can approve it as built but if it is something that we cannot approve, we will say it can’t be condoned, hence we have to remove it.
“As a city, we need to have a database for the development taking place in terms of services to be rendered and some many perimeters and even for researches on the process of developing a new capital city.“Also, at the end of the day it is going to boost our Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) profile, those people that are going to pay us approval fees. We have improved on our system approval granting process”.
