By Daniel Tyokua
The Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Nyesom Wike has identified refusal of some residents to pay ground rent as a greatest challenge for his administration.
He said his administration would not be deterred by the blackmail because of the ground rent payment.
Few days ago, Officials of FCT Administration began sealing properties of ground rent defaulters, including the National Secretariat of the Peoples Democratic Party, the National Agency for Trafficking in Persons, the Federal Inland Revenue Service, a branch of Access Bank and a TotalEnergies Filling Station.
The leadership of the PDP and the FIRS had challenged the actions of the Wike-led FCTA, describing it as unprofessional and an affront on the country’s Democracy.
President Bola Tinubu, had waded into the ground rent enforcement and granted a 14-day ultimatum within which the defaulters are to pay the owed sum, as well as penalties of between N2 million and N3 million, based on locations within the FCT.
While fielding questions from journalists on Wednesday, after inspecting Abuja International Conference Centre and other projects, regretted that residents wanted infrastructure in the FCT, but they failed to support the government by paying their taxes.
He said many of the debtors owed as much as 20 years, even though the ground rent has remained the same for many years.
“(My greatest challenge) is the challenge of people refusing to pay their money. I will speak on that in the next media chat. And people just want facilities, people want infrastructure. But nobody asks, where are you getting these funds? Abuja is not one of the oil cities, we only rely on taxes. These are not new taxes. These are taxes that have been here for years.
“It is unfortunate that most elites own houses overseas. They know the implication of not paying taxes, they know such houses are gone. But when it comes to your own country, you don’t want to do that, simply because nobody wants to obey the law, everybody thinks there are no sanctions.
“Look at the years, 20 something years, 30 something years. And how much is it? We have not increased the ground rent, but we are working towards that, we will do that, I can assure. The President has given a waiver of two weeks. Let nobody thinks that blackmail or whatever will stop us, we will do what we are supposed to do,” he stated.
The Minister also stated that he had recently signed over 1,500 Certificates of Occupancy and Deeds of Assignment, while again encouraging residents to pay their taxes and ground rents to aid development in the FCT.
“If you pay tax, you will see that it will be a different thing. And that’s what we are trying to do,” Wike said.
