GARBA Shehu, a spokesperson for ex-President Muhammadu Buhari, has addressed the ongoing buzz surrounding the seizure of a plot of land in Abuja supposedly owned by the ex-president.
This newspaper had reported how the FCT Minister, Nyesom Wike, revoked 762 Certificates of Occupancy (C-of-O) in the highbrow Maitama district of Abuja over non-payment of statutory fees.
Ex-President Buhari’s Trust Foundation; former Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Walter Onnoghen; Speaker of the house of representatives, Abbas Tajudeen; Secretary to the government of the federation (SGF), George Akume, his wife, Regina; and Uba Sani, governor of Kaduna are among those impacted by the revocations.
But in a statement on Thursday, Shehu emphasized that Buhari is personally not the owner of the said plot of the land which is allocated in the name a “Muhammadu Buhari Foundation.”
According to him, the former President turned down a land allocation when he was in power and therefore the revoked land is not his.
“As a person, the former president has a plot of land to his name in Abuja. When he and his cabinet members were invited to fill the forms and obtain land during his tenure in office, he returned the form without filling it, saying that he already had a plot of land in the FCT, that those who did not have should be given. He, therefore, turned down the offer.
The statement reads: “As with anything Buhari-and there is no surprise in this at all- there is a lot of buzz in the media on the reported seizure of a piece of land by the authorities of the Federal Capital Territory Abuja, FCTA allegedly belonging to the former president Muhammadu Buhari.
“President is personally not the owner of the said plot of the land which is allocated in the name a ‘Muhammadu Buhari Foundation.’
“The Foundation was itself floated by some utilitarian individuals around him who, it must said, went about it in a lawful manner with the support of a number of well-meaning persons.
“But they ran into a roadblock in the land department of the FCDA which handed them an outrageous bill for the issuance of the certificate of occupancy, very high in cost that did not at all compare with the bills given to similar organizations.
“It may have been that this was not erroneous, but a deliberate mistake, making the revocation of land as no surprise to anyone.
“As a person, the former president has a plot of land to his name in Abuja. When he and his cabinet members were invited to fill the forms and obtain land during his tenure in office, he returned the form without filling it, saying that he already had a plot of land in the FCT, that those who did not have should be given. He, therefore, turned down the offer.
“So please let all those jumping up and down in the digital space talking about the rightfulness or the lack of it on the reported seizure of Buhari’s land in Abuja get their facts right, and stop dragging down the name of the former president.”