Emma Ujah, Umoru Henry
12 September 2008
interview
THE Minister of the Federal Capital Territory stands shoulder-high in the nation's Federal Executive Council, FEC. This is because whoever occupies the office is, without doubt, considered close to the heart of the President in all administrations. Dr. Aliyu Modibo Umar, who prides himself as a journalist bestrides the FCT and chooses to run a government that is clearly different from his predecessor's, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai. In this interview with Vanguard, Dr Umar said he almost got caught in the hullabaloo generated by the clamour for the restoration of the Abuja Master Plan, but quickly decided to act in recognition of the fact that the people are the masters plan and should not be slaves to the Master Plan.
He also spoke of his focus in the administration of the FCT and stressed his commitment to providing quality services that would make Abuja a home to both the rich and the poor. He spoke to a team comprising the Abuja Bureau Chief, Emma Ujah, Umoru Henry, Luka Biniyat, Fidelis Ebu and Chris Ochayi. Excerpts:
What is the focus of your administration of the FCT?
I think the most important cardinal point for a public servant, who finds himself in this position, is service, service, service. Now, service in the sense that you are here to deliver on specific mandate given to you by your principal - in this case Mr President. Then also to continue with what the general public expects or residents of Abuja expect the city to be like. And so when we came in of course there was this hullabaloo of the Master Plan.
Master Plan! Master Plan!! Master Plan!!! I also fell into that same trap. My objective was restoration or upholding the master plan. But when I settled on the job, I realised that - yes the Master Plan is important, but Abuja is populated by human beings and that every human being has certain concerns about the nature of how the society should be for him or for his residence or whatsoever.
I realised that the real thing at that time was security of life and property. So we realised that was the immediate thing not only here in Abuja, but primarily even all over the country; people just were taken hostage by hoodlums, by gangsters, by criminals and yet you know 99 per cent of Nigerians are God fearing and what they want is peace.
And so I said in the Federal Capital Territory we will try our very best to make sure that we uphold and keep security as our priority and we have done that.
The statistics given to us by the police after our one and a half years in office, I specifically asked the police, I said okay you keep all the record of all criminal activities in the Territory; give me let me see my performance over this year; give me the same statistics from June 2006 to July 2007 and give me from July 2007 to July 2008, because we came in July 2007 and now we are one year in office.
The statistics is very interesting because it shows that the method is working. Getting closer to the police, trying to assist them in innovation, inviting others that could help to do this work. For instance, we invited Colonel John Madaki (rtd) who is very familiar with this terrain because he was Commander Brigade of Guard; they brought Ali Barau who is employing different type of approach but then we integrated him into our system and then we have a good police commissioner John Haruna.
Above all, I have the cooperation of the IG, so whatever I try to experiment here if it is metropolitan police, which has never been heard of, because you know the police is largely very jealous about their responsibility as a federal institution. And so, any devolution or anything that is seen as devolution of police authority you know they don't agree. But when we explained to the IG, he immediately agreed.
We decided to go beyond providing vehicles for the police. Yes, we bought them the first set of pick_up trucks so that they could pick more police and easily move their personnel.
But under the Metropolitan Police approach, we said we want them to go round the city. Even if you park in one place, for like one hour, the next three hours again they just patrol. Just the mere fact that your presence is being felt means a lot in crime control. As a result of all these strategies, the statistics that we got from the police showed a drastic fall in crime. Reported cases of armed robbery for instance, fell from 346 between 2006 to 2007 July to 134 in July 2008. We are not saying that there are no sporadic cases of crime here and there, but you can easily notice the drastic fall in the rate.
From 2006 June to 2007 July, we counted about (the police have on their record) 50 cases of armed robbery and thank God from July 2007 to July 2008 there has been none; zero incident of bank robbery.
There is something you mentioned which is of great interest to Abuja residents. You were almost caught in the hullabaloo of Master Plan of Abuja. What is your rating between Master Plan and service to the people?
Absolutely. What people expect in service. We are sort of being confronted with moral issues about the Federal Capital Territory and Abuja. I realised that we were gradually becoming servants of the Master Plan not masters of the Master Plan.
So, we were doing all type of things in the name of restoring the master plan; all types of illegalities; all types of rascalities you know all in the name of restoring Master Plan and then we could think, because of powerful propaganda, bring Nigerians into believing that Abuja should be sacrosanct. It is not possible, let's be realistic.
We are in a country of about 140 million people with almost 10 or 20 cities as big as Abuja and then with cities that have habits that have become sort of really incredible to change and these are the same Nigerians that if you are coming from Lagos for instance, they come to Abuja they don't need a visa and they can settle if they want, because they are Nigerians, they have the right to be there; if they are coming from Port Harcourt they don't need a visa; if they are coming from Kano or Kaduna or Bauchi or Nguru or Maiduguri we have all that gamut and then overnight you just want them to be slave of the master plan.
It is not possible; it takes persuasion, it takes orientation; yes we too started demolition because when I came newly I was tagged 'Minister with human face', I appreciate that but over time you also have to do what is right. You realise that yes I have human face, but people should not take it for granted; that was why when we moved into Gosha, we said, okay you guys that decided to come back here and build illegally, you know during the last administration you were demolished and you accepted your fate.
Now that we came and we want to work with you and follow the due process of law you just want to come back all happy. And we went back again and demolished the illegal structures, but with a little difference.
If you see the last exercise we did, we followed exactly what the Land Use Act or the law on urban development says. It says you have to give someone who has erected anything illegally certain amount of time and notice and I even went a step further and I told my Development Control 'you must publish this in at least three national newspapers so that people out there will know and give them the two weeks required' and that was the same thing we did in Gosha.
Even though we didn't advertise it, we did it informally, we gave them the two weeks notice; they wrote a letter appealing to me to give them one month additional time of grace; I cut it down to two weeks so they had four weeks; and when our people went to remove them they pleaded that they were not ready and then they gave additional two weeks. So, all-in-all they had six weeks to vacate that place. In between I have that feeling that they were up to something.
After the six weeks they were trying to perfect a move to take us to court to sort of get an injunction. Thank God, because since we came we have been trying to work with all segments. We sensitised the judiciary about the processes and the judge told me when the case came (later he was telling me) he asked them where are your titles? Before this time a judge will just give them the injunction and then look at the papers later, but this time the judge because we have sensitised them and informed them we are in a very precarious position that they have to work with us.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
