The Federal Housing Authority (FHA) has advised Lagos residents and other Nigerians to stop patronising land grabbers and touts when buying land.
Heeding to the advice, the authority said would prevent loss of investments, urging property owners and developers to always approach the authority for requisite approvals before embarking on construction.
South-West Assistant General Manager/Zonal Head, Survey and Mapping in FHA, Mr Umar Lawal, gave the advice while briefing the media in FESTAC after a planned meeting of stakeholders with was postponed.
The briefing came following the call by FESTAC original allottees and those encroaching at Abule Ado had called for stakeholders meeting with authority to deliberate on the way forward against demolition.
Contrary to figures in the media, Lawal said the ongoing demolition had affected 40 buildings which had irredeemable physical planning infractions or Right of Way (RoW) encroachment issues.
He said the 40 demolished houses were built on NNPCL pipelines, major roads and drains.
He advised Lagos residents to purchase land only after diligent search with both the FHA and the state government, to escape traps of land grabbers and touts.
Lawal warned those building on ROW in FESTAC to stop, to prevent economic losses, as he insisted that demolition would continue till sanity is achieved.
According to him, past efforts to supervise projects and enforce physical planning laws in FESTAC by FHA were resisted by land grabbers and touts who used thugs to attack the officials.
He explained that a small portion of FESTAC under litigation was not touched during the recent demolition.
“FHA acquired 2024.64 hectares and 363 hectares is under litigation; the portion under litigation is on 6th avenue, we are very careful and are not entering that section,” he said.
According to him, in April 2022, a drone was flown on FESTAC to carry out an aerial survey to ascertain the level of distortion for redesign of the area because the town planning layout had been bastardised.
He explained that even new buildings that had reached lintel levels were captured in the new layout.
He added that, a meeting was held and stakeholders were advised to stop any further construction for the authority to be able to redesign the layout to save several buildings from demolition through regularisation.
Lawal said out of 18,000 houses, 14,000 qualified for likely regularisation, adding that, verification and regularisation exercise began and residents were advised to come to the FHA to perfect the process.
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