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Former Governor Nasir El-Rufai has stated that when he was posted to Abuja as FCT minister, he carried out an analysis of residential land allocations. He said the findings showed that three indigenes of three states in Nigeria owned 62 percent of all the residential plots in the Federal Capital Territory.
In a video, El-Rufai said this worried him because Abuja was supposed to be a city where everyone should have a stake. He said he went to Chief Audu Ogbeh, who was the PDP chairman at the time, and told him about the problem.
He said Ogbeh agreed that there was a need to inject balance into land ownership in Abuja for it to reflect its role as a federal capital city.
El-Rufai said two days later, Ogbeh suggested that he should identify states with no FCT landowners, such as Bayelsa, and grant large allocations of land to the governments of such states.
He said Ogbeh told him that this would allow the governments to later sell to their indigenes so they could also feel a sense of ownership. He said the president at the time Olusegun Obasanjo approved the plan and it was carried out.
In El-Rufai’s words: “I was posted to the FCT. Shortly after I settled down we did an analysis of residential land allocations in the federal capital territory and found out that 3 indigenes of 3 states in Nigeria owned 62 percent of all the residential plots in Abuja. I won’t mention the states. But that worried me personally because if we are building the FCT everyone should have a stake”
