The FCT Administration is planning to build a Renewed Hope City housing estate in Abuja with 10,000 houses for the poor people.
The Minister of the FCT, Nyesom Wike, disclosed this on Thursday during the ministerial sectoral update in Abuja.
According to him, the project would be captured in the 2024 FCT budget.
“In our next budget, we want to build a Renewed Hope City. This is for affordable houses, not for the big men,” he said.
“We are going to provide infrastructure and build for them and allocate to the poor. We have in our mind to build 10,000 houses for the poor,” he stressed.
The minister, however, complained that mass housing proposals had failed to work out because estate developers were fond of meeting government to demand large expanse of land, only to divide the land and sell to individuals.
“We cannot allow this, it is fraud. You will now ask why did the FCT stop this? You know in Nigeria, two things play out, ethnicity and religion.”
“Once you are doing the right thing, or they don’t use religion, they would use ethnicity. But, we are equal to the task. Just have it in mind that we have the political will to implement and do what is right.”
Meanwhile, the minister has declared May 27 to June 6 as FCT week to launch projects.
He said the week-long period was to commemorate Mr. President’s one year in office and to commission projects within this period.
He reeled out the achievements of the FCT Administration under his watch.
The minister also frowned at the vandalisation of public property, especially street lighting equipment.
He appealed to the National Assembly to come to their aid by making laws that will prescribe stringent laws that will discourage offenders.
“Take for example, the issue of streetlights. Today, you put streetlights, tomorrow night, it is no longer there. What happened? They vandalised them. They go and cut off the cables,” he said.
“You arrest them and go and prosecute them. What does the law say on conviction, N10,000. So, they continue and we have told the National Assembly that they must come to our aide by amending and reviewing the law to make it very tough to discourage vandals from vandalising our infrastructure.
