All the various arms of the FCT Administration have their specific responsibilities. The system has its inbuilt mechanism for checking abuse. Going by the laid-down procedures, any distortion of the Abuja Master Plan could easily be traced to the department that is responsible. In land matters, five departments are key; Urban and Regional Planning (URP), Lands, Development Control, AGIS and Surveys and Mapping.
As the custodian of the Abuja Master Plan, the URP supervised all the designs for all the districts of the city. In order to prevent abuse and distortions of the plans, requests for allocation of all lands by applicants, are routed to the URP department to regulate the land uses and sizes.
Depending on the sizes and uses of the requests in the forms filled by applicants, it is mandatory for some requests to be accompanied with schematic designs and environmental impact assessments of the proposed development.
In order to respect the principle of land use zoning, the requested land for residential, commercial, industrial, recreational and others, would subsequently be assigned to areas earmarked for the intended uses in the plan by the URP Department before recommendations are made to the minister for approval for the land allocations.
Due to some errors of commission and omission, if allocations are made in contravention of the land use plan, the development control has the power to make the developer to comply with the land use before granting development permit.
Furthermore, while processing for building plans approval, residential use for example, the designs must match the specific development density of where the plot is located, all densities have their specific development requirements. The submissions are subsequently sent by the Development Control Department to the URP for further verification of the land use as designed by the developer, and to Lands Department for further confirmation of the land ownership, to checkmate incidences of ownership conflicts prior to commencement of physical development.
For the purpose of ensuring equity in land distribution, to as much as possible enable as many Nigerians, who can afford, to own land in Abuja, there is a limit to the size of land allocation to individuals and organisations. For urban land the highest that can be allocated is 10 hectares to be used for housing estates or comprehensive developments. For Regional or Area council, it is 20 hectares maximum.
For individual residential plots, other than special residential plots that could be up to 3,000 square meters, the maximum is 2,500 square meters for all the densities. Unfortunately, this regulation is being violated with impunity by the FCT Administration.
There were incidences in some of the previous administrations, but the abuse presently in the current administration is extremely beyond comprehension.
