The embattled former commissioner for Lands in Enugu state, Dr. Victor Nnam, who recently resigned his appointment, has disowned a property marked for demolition by the Enugu Capital Territory Development Authority, ECTDA, Igbere TV reports.
The ECTDA had last week pasted notice for demolition of a duplex located at Diamond Estate in the coal city for none compliance to building approvals.
But Nnam in an interview with our reporter said he was not the owner of the property, stating that ascribing his name to the property would have been a mistake by the ECTDA.
Nnam said: “The property does not belong to me in the first place. The property belongs to one surveyor, but what brought about this is that they wrote the notice in my name and pasted it in a house that does not belong to me.
“A tenant living there said that when the Capital Territory came and pasted the order, he snapped it and sent it to me because the notice is there with my name and that was why he sent it to me and I told him that I don’t know anything about it.
“This is a normal Capital Territory routine but I am meant to believe that the guy has sent to them the approvals because he has all the approvals. Maybe they want to check if the building has apporoval or maybe they want to check if I am the owner of the building but I have good relationship with the Capital Territory and I know that the Chairman of Capital Territory does his job with diligence and I have advised the owner of the building to furnish him with all the payments and approvals.”
Nnam said it was because his name currently trends in Enugu state that probably brought him in contact with the property. He stressed that the property does not belong to him, insinuating that it was possible that somebody misled the agency into connecting him with the building.
Chairman of ECTDA, Dr. Josef Onoh however said that the agency is apolitical and does not engage in vindictiveness, stating that the notices were normal routine work of the agency.
Onoh said: “We are not interested in the owner or whoever. Our own is a general review, a periodic review and enforcement of development control. That people have built house and are living in them does not stop development control. We usually go back for review to ensure the house was built to standards.
“Our control measure is not only limited to that house, it’s just that some people are now trying to politicise it and cheap bloggers trying to use the opportunity to sell their blogs with misinformation to the general public.”
He added that the agency recognizes that Nnam is a former commissioner who deserves courtesy, stating that a notice does not necessarily mean outright demolition but a step towards remedying whatever lapses that a developer may have.
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