SHOCKING: How Soldiers Seized Jonathan Linked Multi Billion Naira Firm
A development that may rock the relationship between the Nigerian Army and the Federal Capital Development Administration, FCDA, is building up and may crystallise into a show of force or legal tussle.
The spat is masterminded by the Nigerian Army which, on Saturday, September 3, 2016, sealed off the road leading to the 230 hectares of land known as the Maitama Extension District and drove out the workers of a company, Kakatar Civil Engineering Limited, providing engineering infrastructure for the district. The army says the land belongs to it. It did not, however, show any document to buttress its claim of ownership but has deployed soldiers to the site.
By that action, the company’s working tools, like asphalt-producing plants, rock crushers, state-of-the-art fabrication workshop and earth moving equipment like bulldozers and excavators, as well as trucks, are trapped: they can neither be maintained nor repaired while those to be moved out for external jobs in locations like Karishi and Kyami, where the company is also working for the FCDA, have been barred from leaving the premises.
It is not as if the new Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Alhaji Mohammed Bello, has stoked any fire since his appointment by President Muhammadu Buhari last year, it is the military high command that is taking the fight to his doorsteps, claiming that its vast land in the area has been encroached on by the firm being run by a civil rights lawyer, Azibaola Roberts, a cousin of former President Goodluck Jonathan. In fact, the rumour mill has been awash with stories that the entire Maitama Extension, a new district stretching over 230 hectares of land with over 400 plots allocated to Nigerians and duly captured in the Abuja master plan, is owned by Jonathan and is merely being managed by Kakatar.
To worsen matters for the company and the FCDA, the massive parcel of land, overlooking the Katampe, Mpape, Guzape hills, shares borders with the Lungi Barracks of the Nigerian Army, making it possible for soldiers to hitherto provide security for the Kakatar premises. As a rule, no visitor could access the vast Kakatar premises, which hosts its construction facilities, without being cleared by armed soldiers, who manned the gates. The relationship between the company and the army had been very cordial until that morning when soldiers, claiming to ‘be acting on instruction from above’, changed their attitude and decided to act as an ‘enemy’ to Kakatar and its workers.
