Minister of Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike, speaks on Internally-Generated Revenue for the FCT; issues surrounding the issuance of Certificate-of-Occupancy to land owners in the territory; the Abuja metro line project; intrigues by civil servants in FCT Administration; and the need for political stability in Rivers State, among sundry matters, in this interview with journalists. Ben Adoga captures the conversation
The issue of N5m to be paid for the issuance of C-of-O is generating a lot of controversy. How was the amount arrived at?
Thank you very much. That is why it is important to have this chat to educate the public. The FCT Administration never insisted that there would be N5m for C-of-O. What happened was that before I came on board, there was this system that mass housing used one C- of O, even if there are about 500 housing units. We have liberalised it so that individuals can have their C-of-Os. Those who wanted C-of-Os for mass housing, when they came around, I said we needed to have a summit, I called for an interactive season. We told the stakeholders, developers and those who have bought from these developers, everybody was there, we allowed about six people to speak, it was very interesting. The task force proposed N5m and the stakeholders say it should be reduced. Are we going to do it based on size, two bedrooms, three bedrooms, or four bedrooms and above, but then you understand that C-of-O is not given based on size, it’s just the land, the only difference is the annual ground rent which is by size, for C-of-O it’s the same. At the stakeholders meeting, we reduced the cost for those in mass housing to N3.5m each for C-of-O. Stakeholders were happy because that was the first time in their history to sit down with the minister and interact. They appreciated the interaction, I made them understand some things like the salary wage bill of the FCTA monthly which is about N8.9bn. FCT collects one per cent of what is allocated to the Federal Government. Ordinarily, it should have been one per cent of the entire federation account. Now ask how we pay salaries. We fall back to IGR. Some counties solely depend on their IGR, so you cannot say that what we are collecting is illegal, I explained to them to see the situation, if you are not told, there is this assumption that there is so much money. An estate that has over 500 houses will have just one C-of-O.
What are you doing about the challenges of land allocation C-of-Os?
To curb some problems of land allocations, we say let’s forget the issue of the allocations and now go into properly issuing C of Os for those in mass housing, the task force came up. We are trying to come up with new things, which we have got approvals from Mr President, there are lots of discrepancies and claims to C of Os, so we have come up with an idea that every allottee who seeks and applies for C-of-O will supply his NIN. That will also help in terms of security checks, we need that after all so many people can answer the same name, but no two persons can have one NIN. This is one of the features we are going to put in the new C-of-O. In the case of corporate bodies, they don’t go with NIN, so for corporate bodies that have properties, their BVN must be used. For those who already have, we are going to do a recertification so that everybody who has a C-of-O will come back for recertification so that we incorporate this NIN. Those who already have C-of-Os will not need to pay the full cost, may need to pay just N50, 000 and corporate bodies, may need to pay N100, 000. Apart from helping in security, it will also help in boosting our IGR. Like those who own about seven properties, they can be identified for them to pay taxes.
Tell us about this IGR, in the last few months, we’ve seen your effort in trying to raise the revenue profile of the FCT what exactly are you doing?
Over the years, nobody has been able to enforce the payment of ground rent, I came on board and said it can’t be business as usual, you have a property you are allocated a C of O to back up your property on your Right-of-Occupancy, you are told to be paying annual rent, for the past 15 years you didn’t pay, some people have not paid for up to 20 years, you know Nigerians, they say ‘nothing will happen’ and I tell them, something will happen; you have to pay.
Are you saying the past leadership in the FCT is culpable for not enforcing it?
Why are you waiting for someone to enforce it, it’s a covenant, do your side, just like a good tenant, will you wait for your landlord to begin to chase you up and down when you know your tent has expired? You are now saying because previous administrations did not come out to push you to pay, now we have come out to push you to pay, when I came on board and said if you don’t pay I will revoke, people came out and said you think Abuja is Rivers State. I know Abuja is not Rivers that is why they call here Abuja and Rivers State, but you must pay. Now they know that we mean what we have said, if you don’t pay we will revoke. We have been doing that and people are now queueing up to pay. There are several other areas that we have not tapped from, as a government, it’s your function to see the laws that allow you to raise funds for the governing of your area, and the steps we’ve taken are paying off. I can tell you, as at the time I came what was being collected was about N12bn to N14bn a month totally as IGR, but today we have over N100bn. Before IGR was spent daily, I said we wouldn’t do that again. Every money is paid into the IGR account till the end of the month and the funds to our priority projects, pay contractors let them go back to work. You see abandoned projects everywhere in FCT, why? Not just a lack of funds, but we were not allowed to participate in larger financial transactions. All our money went to CBN. All our IGR went to CBN, we can’t borrow money from CBN. What the President did was the only way we could survive, he brought us out from the TSA. Now that we are out of the TSA, we can go to the wider financial market, we can approach the banks, and negotiate our terms. When they ask how you pay us, we can say we will attach our IGR to you, for example, we request for N200bn and tell the bank to take N30bn from our IGR account monthly to liquidate the N200bn. If we have such an agreement, they can liquidate in two to four years, before you know it, you have achieved what you wanted.
You talked about property tax, are you saying that the law allows you to collect property tax?
Yes, very well.
So you want to enforce that now?
Yes, the tax authority and Economic Planning Department are already working on that, they’re engaging stakeholders the details of that are left for them to come up with but whether we are allowed by law, the answer is yes.
Will the enforcement of that law wear a human face, will it be retroactive?
No, we are not collecting property tax retroactively. We are not saying over the years, we are not doing that.
We read somewhere that you were once given a fake C-of-O, can you explain how it happened?
It was not me as a person, but as state governor of Rivers State. We applied for it because we thought we had a property. In fact, our liaison officer then brought the three fake certificates. Behold there were fake and given to us here.
When people come now for recertification and realise that what they have is fake what should they do? Is it the FCTA who is culpable?
What I mean is, that there was no such property, but they have given us C-of-O. How can you have a C of O without property?
That suggests a deeper problem…
We have come to make changes, people don’t like change, but change is inevitable. It was obvious that people would fight against it, but I was resolute. Look at the scenario government gets the land, provides infrastructure, and allocates to mass housing owners who build and sell with nothing coming into government, they call it affordable houses, I don’t know who defines affordable houses, but when I call them, the director in charge of that project was fidgeting as if she would faint, I asked her ‘madam, what’s happening to you?’ she asked, Oga, you go cancel am? I told her to go and get me the file, and immediately I left the office, I had calls from everywhere. What kind of country are we in?
Did you succumb?
Succumb? I had already appended my signature. I don’t succumb to such a thing. Another thing happened, in this place, you find out the way our people think, sometimes they go ethnic, because I am an Ibo man, Hausa man, Yoruba man, and so on- when that doesn’t work, they go to religion, they call bishops, imams. They claim he is doing this thing because Am a Muslim, he is doing it because I am a Christian, but you must show leadership, you must be firm. That is what I am going to do. I saw a file where FCT agreed with a developer, I don’t know how, but in that contract, FCT will pay some land charges to the developer and the Federal Government approved that contract for the developer to provide infrastructure and the contract sum was N61bn, somehow, the business collapsed. The contractor said he took loan from a bank and later they said FCTA should now pay him N58bn for 23 per cent of job done, I had migraine. What kind of country? FEC approved it. I summoned those in charge, and called FCT Executive Council and asked the lawyers why we should pay that kind of money. Immediately we finished that meeting, all my friends were calling me. The corruption here is terrible. Sometimes, I wonder if we can ever come out of this, you will be blackmailed. Ask yourself one question, why was it that before I came, contractors were not on site?
The huge wage bill, coupled with corruption, yet we have not heard of measures to deter these practices…
First of all, I didn’t come here to prosecute anybody. If I say this thing will not continue and someone says no, it must continue, then you have given me room to insist that I won’t allow this. If you dabble in that, you will not be able to focus on your assignment but anybody who wants to continue will face the wrath of the law.
How are you tackling the issue of land grabbing and multiple land allocations?
There was a case I was settling, FCTA allocated over 300 hectares of land to a company in 2001, revoked it in 2002, and re-allocated it to another company. In 2005, it was revoked and reallocated to the initial company without giving notice to the second company that was involved. In 2009, it was revoked again and reallocated to another company. I have told them, it will not happen again. Next week, God keeping us alive, I will inaugurate the external solicitors that we have assembled, all senior advocates, over 24, to defend FCT on land matters. You know what happens here, even the legal secretariat will tell people to sue us, but they will not go to court to defend it. It’s business, racketeering, so you see several judgements against the FCT. External solicitors will be expensive, but we will do it in a way that will help us. We will pay the bills to external solicitors, but nobody will go and compromise them. I have collapsed all lawyers into one legal secretariat, no more some in AGIS Lands and so forth. They now advise them to sue me, the matter will linger till I am out of here. To burst that cartel, you must be very prepared. Me, I am prepared, I will face it.
Let’s move from the obstacles to the possibilities, what are some of the infrastructure being put in place?
Mr President had given us targets. Mr President will be one year May 29, 2024. It is not me that is celebrating, but when Mr President is celebrating, I am also celebrating. I have created confidence in contractors and extracted agreements to finish the jobs before then, then I’ve forwarded a supplementary budget to Mr President to enable us to pay the contractors. We have the money in our statutory budget, so we are asking to spend it. For example, the VP’s residence that was awarded in 2010, 23 good years and was abandoned, I called Julius Berger and they agreed to deliver before May 29. Road B6, can you finish it, they said yes, how much do you need, they mentioned and I said go ahead. B12 will finish next year, and the Villa Road, the four lanes will be finished next year.
The President said he wanted to ride on the metro line
We are ready, I did promise that Mr President will ride on the metro line, but we have a challenge. We have the naira component to pay, but the dollar component, I don’t know where FCTA will hey $7m to pay CCECC, we have written to Mr President to intervene because it’s a major project.
When will FCT residents get a mass transit system?
Good news for you. We are launching vehicles for mass transit in December. The funds are part of the supplementary budget we submitted. We are anticipating that the National Assembly will pass it. The procurement process is on, we have the money in our account, and all we are seeking is National Assembly to pass it so we spend it.
How many are we looking at?
Both buses and taxis for the first phase will be restricted to the city centre, Maitama, Garki, and Wuse because we want to stop this one-chance crime. When we start there will be no excuse, why should anyone go and enter a taxi that is a risk? The vehicles will be normal but painted in Abuja colours.
Are you trying to make the FCT a megacity?
Let it be a city that people will say this is the city, I don’t want to use the word mega, but let it be the city that people will say have you been to Abuja? Also in Life Camp, the traffic is something else, we are dualising the road. I saw the width which is 52 metres; that is too much for me to do now, I have reduced it to 32 metres. There’s nothing wrong with the 52 metres, but we are talking about the cost. These are the projects that will be part of our initiative. Again, we are going to build bus terminal centres. We’ll start with three so that all these problems of taxis will be eased. When we have these terminals, if you want to go to Nyanya, you go to the terminal, let us start from there to become organised, I know it is difficult, but with determination and commitment and with the backing of Mr President we will achieve it.
Is that part of what we should expect in December as well?
No, you can’t build three bus terminals in one month. It will be in the budget for next year.
You have been hosting Ambassadors, what has been the takeaways from the ones you have hosted so far?
For me, first of all, as the landlord, convention demands that they will come and pay courtesy calls. I assure them of a conducive environment for them, security issues, some of them may have some problems, as a foreign body, that relate with FCT that we need to solve and again there are areas that we need to partner, like tourism. We met with the chairman of Daewoo Worldwide when he came here, he indicated that they wanted to partner with us and in some areas. He said he wants to establish a five-star hotel, a world-class facility, our role is to provide the land for them and a conducive environment. I was told that I am going to be part of the delegates traveling with Mr President to the UAE. They also want to build a seven-star hotel, the team came last Thursday we will have further discussions when we get to UAE. Mexico has agreed to partner with us in terms of vocational and skill education and agriculture. I always say this, mine is not just to visit and sign MoUs, I believe we need to have concrete arrangements and, the time of commencement. We have to visit back to some of these countries to sign relevant documents on areas we have indicated interest. We will also visit Korea to finalise with Daewoo on these five-star hotels, and I will say for now that it’s been very positive.
Let’s look at projects that you can easily complete, when you look at the population, the metro line starts from the Church Gate. Are you king extending it to the other side?
No, you see, it’s supposed to go from ECOWAS down to Nyanya and beyond, but it is very expensive, very expensive. Rail transport is good in other to reduce traffic and transport goods, but let’s tell ourselves the simple reality, as it is today, the one we are doing, from Church Gate to airport, how many years now? About 11 years now, that is why it must be a national project. FCT is not only for residents of FCT, it’s for the entire Nigerians, so you can imagine, that if I want to do rail for two or three years, I don’t think we will embark on any project again because the cost is astronomical, when you look at the dollar component, it’s something else, so it’s only the Federal Government that can go into that now in terms of funding.
But Lagos funded theirs…
How can you compare, a state that nets over N50bn a month it can take a loan and secure it against their IGR. But it’s very imperative, if the federal government says lets partner, put the money down, not promises, I will want the money to be in the bank, because when I see the way budget is going, no, no, no, do you know what FCT got in 2023 budget, N17bn, a national budget, and only N1bn was released.
But you are doing well
Because we are determined, if the President did not remove us from TSA, how would we have been talking about projects? Removing us from TSA has solved a lot of problems; watch what’s going to happen in 2024. We are going to tie our IGR to money coming from banks, we don’t need to wait so variation won’t come, even if you are paying them monthly, they can call for variation, for instance, the bank gives me N300bn to N400bn, as the case may be, and I put all the money in the project, no variation will come and in two years, you would have reduced the payment and go for more funds, then you will see the development and growth in the city. One thing I assured Mr President was that my zeal commitment and passion for the work I did in Rivers State will not lower here, rather, it will increase, that is what is happening in FCT today.
Let’s talk about Rivers politics. Is it true that the trouble started when the state Governor made just three appointments that you said you did not approve of?
How can you say that, I didn’t want to talk about that, what is happening now is what fits in his book. Give a man power and money, that is when you know who he really is, if you have not given a man power and money, don’t say you know the person. He may be your brother, your son, your friend. If you have not given the person power and money, don’t say you know the person.
Talking about your decision to pick Sim Fubara to succeed you, are you regretting it now?
Difficult question. If you ask me truly, within what was available at that time, those who showed themselves, if I had supported any of them, the next day I would have been in trouble.
So that was your best option?
At that time, yes, but we never knew it would be three months to scatter a political structure that built you up and started carrying propaganda, oh this, oh that. You know what is painful when you see these allegations, who and who sat with me when he was picked as the governor? Did he buy form? What I want to tell you, be grateful in life in all circumstances, oh no, be grateful in life in all circumstances. Any politician or so-called elder I see around such person, I see you as an ingrate. Anybody who is a gentleman, who knows what politics is all about, will support that kind of thing. Look at it, you have 31 members in the Assembly and 27 are against you.
But some people will say what goes around comes around- that this is exactly what you did to Rotimi Amaechi…
I was not with Amaechi. Amaechi didn’t bring me to be governor, with due respect
But he made you his Chief of Staff, he made you ministerial choice…
No, no, no it’s not true, with due respect, I was the one that worked for him to be governor in 2007, are you not aware? He didn’t make me minister, he went back to the National Assembly to disqualify me through DSS. He did not bring me to be governor in 2015, he fought me. The point I am making is, that I am comfortable, President Ahmed Tinubu did not just give me a minister, he gave me a Minister of FCT, and what else am I looking for? That does not mean I will allow anybody to crumble our political structure, it will not happen. Nobody is complaining about governance, go ahead. I challenge anybody, all the road projects you are doing- I laid the foundation. The ring road, I passed as governor in a council meeting and I told him you must do this road as governor. I took him to Germany with the Director of Procurement to go and negotiate with Julius Berger. I told him, if you do this Ring Road, your second tenure is assured. If I didn’t mean well will I show him all these? I told him, to go and borrow money from Zenith Bank, pay Julius Berger, and let them be deducted from you every month. Julius Berger said that they are going to do it in three years, which means, that in the year leading to your election, nobody will challenge you in Rivers State. If I had no good intentions, I would not do it.
Did you sanction his impeachment?
Which impeachment? Look, if they are impeaching you, did you call me? Assuming I am the one who plotted it, for example, did he call to say ‘they want to impeach me o!’ Is it why you send people to go and burn the hallow chamber, is impeachment done in one day? Is impeachment process a one day affair? Then he raised ethnic politics. We have never had it like this before.
We’ve seen you both together after that time we thought you’d made
Will anybody stop me from going to functions?
So that was a photo ops (show)
I am not interested. Mr President had intervened, anything they will make me not to respect Mr President, is not there. Mr President has said Minister, please do this do that and you go and do this. Politics is not like that. When the law speaks, thuggery will run away, when the law speaks militants will run away, been the law speaks ethnicity will run. The law have not spoken.
Have you foreclosed any amicable resolution of this problem?
Did I tell you that I have a problem? I am saying this is the structure that brought you, be fair to them. Be fair to the structure that brought you. Even those who were opposed to you, you are insulating everyone, you are the governor, but what you must understand is people had sleepless nights, you don’t just throw them away like that. It is too early, I have never seen this happen anywhere. First of all you have told Nigerians who you are. Some people even pretend for one year or two years before they show their true colours, this is just six months. There is nothing you can say in this world, nothing. Nobody is supporting you, those with you think you are fighting Wike, at the appropriate time I will win. Mark it today, there is this language I always tell them ‘If it didn’t dey, it didn’t dey’. I have respected Mr President, and Mr Vice president, I will not do anything.
If this crisis is to end, it has to be the decision of the two of you. You as the elderly person don’t you think it is incumbent on you, because you are the one who brought him and introduced him to the people of Rivers State as your successor?
They are carrying propaganda. I am the one that brought Sherriff (former PDP chairman, Ali Modu Sherriff) I removed Sherriff, I brought Secondus (Uche), I removed him, who is interested in that kind of rubbish. I bought Secondus, he wanted to undo us, as a politician, I won’t survive it, Sherriff wanted to undo us I should fold my hands, that will be nonsense. No amount of ethnic sentiment will change us. He will see politics in the state, its small, small. At the time we were bringing him, they fought me, we were told that he is not a proper Ijaw. Today they play the ethnic card.
If you look at your phone and Governor Fubara is the one calling you will you pick up?
Ah, if the governor calls you, you no pick? You don’t know me very well, I am a loyal Rivers citizen, very loyal Rivers citizen. If you know me very well you won’t ask that. People may hate me, and I don’t care, but what I can never stand is ingratitude, for example, Asiwaju made me Minister of FCT, and I’ve heard so many things people say at my back, some say they are empowering me towards 2027. People don’t have character, I have character.
