Land fraud: Six FCTA workers in EFCC net

EFCC Chairman, Ibrahim Lamorde

Six officials of the Federal Capital Territory Administration are being interrogated by the operatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission for large scale land fraud in Abuja.

It was gathered that the officials, who worked in the Abuja Geographic Information Systems and the Land Administration Department, were said to have assumed the authority of the FCT minister, Senator Bala Mohammed, by creating a new district which they sold to members of the public.

The affected personnel of the AGIS allegedly usurped the powers of the FCT Land Use and Allocation Committee and carved out a layout for themselves which they sold to land speculators.

The affected personnel included Planning Officer I, Programme Officer, a Land Officer and a Clerical Officer.

Others include two staff in the Land Administration Department, who occupied the positions of Land Officer I and Assistant Executive Officer.

The suspects have been suspended by the FCT minister, and they may be prosecuted by the EFCC upon conclusion of investigation.

The staff were said to have raked in millions of naira from the sale of the land that they illegally sold by exploiting their position in AGIS, which is the authority in charge of land administration in the Federal Capital Territory.

AGIS is charged with the establishment of a computerised geospatial data infrastructure and a one-stop shop for all land matters for the FCT.

Findings indicated that the six indicted workers were part of a cartel in the FCT Administration that manipulated land data and information with which they cornered plots of land in choice locations.

The cartel, which includes some moneybags, land speculators and some government officials, were said to have perfected the art of stealing land from the FCT Administration and private owners which they sell to ready buyers who in turn resell at huge amounts.

It was gathered that the group had also dispossessed a lot of people of their lands by falsifying land data and allocation details on the AGIS system.

“The group can make a land that has been duly allocated by the minister to ‘disappear’ by simply changing or falsifying the land details and information on the AGIS system, so that when you carry out searches on the land, you won’t find anything about it; the land would simply cease to exist,” a source stated.