Residents of Trademore Estate in the Lugbe area of Abuja has petitioned the Permanent Secretary of the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA), Olusade Adesola over the planned demolition of more than 60 houses in the residential estate.
The residents in a petition signed by Constitutional lawyer, Prof. Mike Ozekhome SAN, debunked insinuation that the estate has no development plan approval.
According to Ozekhome, the estate was developed in 2007 and no case of flooding was recorded until recently.
“Our client (Trademore Estate) humbly urges you to use your good offices to consider the sorry plight and sufferings of our client’s innocent residents in the estate and intervene timeously to save lives and properties, by halting any further demolition of residents’ houses,” Ozekhome said.
Recall that the residents had on Monday shut their gates in protest against the planned demolition of structures in the estate by officials of the Federal Capital Development Authority (FCDA).
The Permanent Secretary of the FCTA had declared the Trademore area a disaster zone that “needs immediate action to remedy further damages and loss of lives and properties”.
Read the full letter below
RE: YOUR PROPOSED DEMOLITION OF HOUSES IN TRADEMORE ESTATE, LUGBE, ABUJA, FCT: DEBUNKING THE INSINUATION BY THE DIRECTOR OF DEVELOPMENT CONTROL UNIT STATING THAT TRADEMORE ESTATE HAS NO DEVELOPMENT PLAN APPROVAL
1. We refer to the above subject matter.
2. We are Solicitors to Trademore International Holdings Ltd, (“our client”), on whose clear and express instructions and mandate we humbly write this letter debunking the insinuation by the Director of Development Control Unit of the FCDA to the effect that our client has not shown that he has any Development Plan Approval for the Trademore Estate, Lugbe, Abuja.
3. Our client’s attention was so drawn to the television interview granted by the said Director of Development Control Unit of the FCDA, Mr. Mukhtar Galadima, on the 4th day of July, 2023, wherein he insinuated and speculated, albeit erroneously, on the causes of frequent flooding in Trademore Estate, Lugbe. He insinuated during the interview that has since gone viral that the reason the frequent flooding in Trademore Estate is because our client probably developed the estate without seeking and obtaining the requisite Development Plan Approval.
SETTING THE RECORDS STRAIGHT
4. It is necessary to stress here that our client, being an experienced indigenous real estate developer in Nigeria with well over two decades of cognate experience in real estate development, could not have entered a site and started development without proper allocation and authorization. Our client was properly allocated the land containing the Trademore Estate. It duly sought for and obtained Development Plan Approval for the development of the Trademore Estate, building over 700 units of houses, an achievement that was facilitated by huge bank loans.
5. On this question of whether or not our client had a Development Plan Approval, may we humbly refer you to a letter written to our client by the Office of the Abuja Metropolitan Management Council (AMMC), dated the 23rd of March, 2010, wherein the Co-ordinator of the AMMC stated the obvious as follows:
“The Council has critically looked at your case and observed as follows:
a) Your Company is a beneficiary of lands allocations made in Lugbe by the Abuja Municipal Area Council;
b) Your Company was granted a building Plan Approval in 2004 by the same AMAC;
c) The company has gone ahead to develop a total units of about 700 houses on the plot based on the granted approval;
d) The layout within which your land is located is yet to be approved by the Urban and Regional Planning department of the FCDA;”
A copy of the said letter dated 23rd March, 2010, is herewith attached and marked as “Annexures A”.
6. The above was a definite concession by the FCTA that Development Plan Approval was indeed duly applied for and granted to the Trademore Estate, Lugbe. The issue concerning the layout by the Urban and Regional Planning Department of the FCDA (which said layout approval cuts across the entire Lugbe axis), was and is a matter of internal arrangement which the FCDA and AMMC were to sort out amongst themselves. To further buttress the fact that the issue of approval of the layout was an internal arrangement, the AMMC went further to add that “The Council has already initiated some inter-departmental consultations on the issue with a view to resolving the problem of layout for Lugbe area…”.
7. This makes it abundantly clear that it was not only Trademore Estate that was involved but the “layout for Lugbe Area”. Trademore is only one of the estates and residential buildings built in the “Lugbe area”
8. In the light of the above, it is not correct as insinuated by Mr. Mukhtar Galadima, that there was no development Plan Approval for our client’s estate. By the above admission, the Trademore Estate, Lugbe, has a proper allocation and a duly granted Development Plan Approval according to which specification the houses were built.
See paragraphs 5(a), (b), (c) above
9. It is also not correct to insinuate or allege that a purported lack of Development Plan Approval was responsible for the perennial flooding of the Trademore Estate. The remote and immediate causes of the flooding have been explained in explicit details in our earlier letter to you, dated the 4th of July, 2023. A copy of our said letter dated 4th July, 2023, is herewith attached and marked as “Annexures B”.
10. This is also to add that the problems of flooding in the Trademore estate are not caused by any act or omission linked to our client, but by forces that are outside its control, many of them propelled by agencies of government, unworkable dam and neighbouring construction activities.
CONCLUSION
11. Our client humbly urges you to use your good offices to consider the sufferings of our client’s innocent residents in the estate and the avoidable hardship that will be caused by a further demolition of parts of the estate, and intervene timeously to save lives and properties, of innocent residents by halting any such further demolition of the residents’ houses. We believe that our client has not any way contravened any known laws to be met with such governmental show of power.
12. Please, accept the assurances of our esteemed regards.
Yours Faithfully,
Prof Mike A. A. Ozekhome, SAN, OFR, CON, FCIArb, LL.M, Ph.D, LL.D, D.Litt.
Chief Counsel/Head of Chambers
Recall that the Estate had earlier written to the Permanent Secretary requesting a stop to further demolition of houses in the Estate and possible solution.
Read the full letter dated 4th July 2023 below
The Permanent Secretary,
Federal Capital Territory Administration,
Plot 1, Kapital Street,
Area 11, Garki,
Abuja, FCT,
Nigeria.
Dear sir,
OUR PETITION THAT YOU HALT FURTHER DEMOLITION OF HOUSES IN TRADEMORE ESTATE, LUGBE, ABUJA, FCT AND THE NECESSITY FOR YOUR ADMINISTRATION TO IMPLEMENT LONG-ADVISED PRACTICAL SOLUTIONS TO CURB FURTHER FLOODING AT THE ESTATE.
1. The above subject matter refers.
2. We are Solicitors to Trademore International Holdings Ltd, (“our client”), on whose clear and express instructions and mandate we humbly write this petition urging you to take urgent and wholistic view of the critical issues that have emerged regarding the flooding of the Trademore Estate at Lugbe, Abuja.
BACKGROUND FACTS
3. Our client is an experienced indigenous real estate Developer in Nigeria with well over two decades of cognate experience in real estate development. He has so far delivered about eighteen housing estates spread across Nigeria.
4. It is our client’s brief that it developed Trademore Estate, Lugbe, in the year 2007. The first set of allottees in the estate took immediate possession and moved into the estate that same year.
5. From the inception of the building of the housing estate in the year 2007 up and until 2014, there was no single recorded incidence of flooding in the estate. The very first flooding occurred on the 5th of May, 2014, exactly seven (7) years after the allotees took possession of their houses and moved in.
6. Our client, who became deeply worried, saddened and burdened at the sudden unannounced flood, immediately carried out a thorough investigation through its engineering firm in an attempt to unravel the immediate and remote causes of the sudden flooding. It discovered that the flood channels passing through various surrounding estates had been sand-filled by their owners for construction purposes, and flood water had been clandestinely diverted into our client’s estate.
7. In addition, our client’s engineering company also discovered that a dam at Aleita (a nearby settlement) which collects water from Pyakasa, Kaura, Dakwo, Duboyl, Gadwa and other communities, and which serves as a buffer for flood water flowing through the entire area, had almost been completely wiped out over the years due to heavy sand filling and illegal land reclamation activities by persons in the area outside our client’s estate.
8. It was also our client’s findings that this massive reclamation of land after Trademore estate had culminated in the reduction in the width of the water outlet after the estate, especially behind Clobek Estate, Wisdom Estate and other estates in Lugbe. This reclamation greatly distorted the lateral flow of water, thus resulting in flood water directly flowing into our client’s estate whenever a heavy downpour occurred.
STEPS OUR CLIENT IMMEDIATELY TOOK AFTER ITS FINDING
9. Our client immediately presented its findings to your Department of Development Control on the 5th of May, 2014, after the first flooding incidence in the estate. This presentation by our client led to a physical meeting between the management of the Department of Development Control and some of our client’s Directors.
10. Consequent upon the meeting, our client was orally directed by the Department of Development Control to embark on expansion and dredging of the channel within the estate. Our client immediately carried out these directives of expanding and dredging the said channel within the estate under the strict supervision of representatives of the Department of Development Control.
ANOTHER MAJOR STEP TAKEN BY OUR CLIENT AFTER THE FIRST DIRECTIVE AND COMPLIANCE YIELDED MINIMAL RESULTS
11. Upon our client carrying out the directives as proffered by the management of the Department of Development Control through expansion and dredging of the channel within the estate, there was respite as there was no further incidence of flooding between 2015 and 2018 (a period of four years).
12. However, in 2019, there was yet another disheartening flooding of the estate. Our worried client contacted your same Department of Development Control and its officials were invited for a joint site visit of the flooded portions via a letter dated 8th September, 2020. The said meeting duly took place on the 10th of September, 2020. There was a joint tour of the entire estate between top officials of the Department of Development Control and representatives of our client to identify the cause or causes of the fresh flooding. Copies of the letter of invitation and the minutes of the meeting held thereat are herewith attached and respectively marked as “Annexures A and B”.
13. The outcome of the joint meeting as contained in the minutes (Annexure B) attached above made the following recommendations:
a. There should be an expansion of the two-cell culvert in the estate to three cells, totalling (15X3M). Our client immediately implemented and completed this recommendation.
b. There should be expansion and dredging of the canal before and after the culvert to 25.0M. Our client immediately implemented this recommendation.
14. It is worth noting that our client had duly and fully interfaced with officials of your Department of Development Control before carrying out the above recommendations made by your Development Control. It was on their authorisation and directives that our client had immediately implemented the said recommendations without any delay. A copy of the our client’s investigation findings dated 26th August, 2020, and the acknowledged letter forwarding same to your department, dated the 22nd of September, 2020, are respectively herewith attached and marked as “Annexures C and D”
CAUSE OF THE THIRD FLOODING IN OUR CLIENT’S ESTATE IN 2022
15. It is regrettable to state that after our client had duly implemented and executed the recommendations of your officials’ directives as stated above, a third major flooding occurred again in the year 2022, three years after the last flooding. Upon further investigation, it was unravelled that the cause of the third major flooding, which even outdid the two previous floodings, was triggered by a flawed project poorly executed by the Federal Government’s own Department of Ecological Funds in the year 2021, which was carried out on Lugbe road without proper environmental assessment.
16. This very FG’s project forced the flood into our client’s estate to flow backwards and circulate into the estate because of the government agency’s failure to construct an important bridge that was required there. Rather, the government engineers had merely built three cell culverts which were too narrow and therefore inadequate to take the heavy volume of water that flowed in and out of the estate.
17. After this third flooding, and upon our client’s complaints, the Department of Development Control, via a letter dated 11th May, 2022, invited our client to a stakeholder’s meeting to take a holistic view of the emergent challenges. A copy of the said letter is herewith attached and marked as “Annexure E”.
THE SUDDEN AND UNPROVOKED ACT OF THE DEPARTMENT OF DEVELOPMENT CONTROL IN DEMOLISHING OUR CLIENT’S ESTATE
18. Our client informs us that despite the several steps it took to bring to an end the perennial flooding incidence in our client’s estate as agreed to and directed by the Department of Development Control, it came to it as a rude shock when the same Department of Development Control stormed our client’s estate on the 9th of May, 2022, with fully armed security agents and demolished over 35 units of houses, using sheer brute force in the process.
19. The Department of Development Control carried out this act in utmost bad faith, claiming that the units destroyed were allegedly built on flood plains. No such allegation had ever cropped up, nor discovered throughout the many meetings held between the said Department and our client over the years. This singular act of needless and wanton destruction of properties rendered several innocent families homeless and helpless. It is worth noting that after the said demolition exercise of the 35 units of houses, nothing whatsoever and howsoever was done by either the Department of Development Control, or the FCT Administration, towards certifying that the demolition thus carried out had proffered any permanent solution to the recurring floods. The simple reason is that there were no houses built on any flood plains at the Trademore estate.
YET ANOTHER 60 UNITS OF HOUSES NOW MARKED FOR DEMOLITION IS CERTAINLY NOT THE SOLUTION TO THE FLOODING CHALLENGE AT TRADEMORE ESTATE
20. To our client’s shock and utter consternation, the Department of Development Control again visited our client’s estate on Monday, 27th June, 2023, and marked yet over 60 houses for another round of demolition, without paying any attention whatsoever to the real FG-triggered challenges, or finding any panacea to the problems thrown up by acts of agencies of the government. This needless act of wanton demolition of houses if carried out will yet again render several families homeless if the Department of Development Control is not urgently called to order and halted on its tracks from proceeding with said needles demolition.
21. It is our client’s firm belief that the continuous demolition of houses is not the solution to the flooding of Trademore estate and its environs, whether temporary or permanent. It is rather simply wasteful, unconscionable and deprivative. A proper channelization of the water expansion route of the narrowed and blocked water canals within the estate must be fully implemented to have a lasting and permanent solution.
THE CURRENT STATE OF AFFAIRS
22. Our client states that it has been terribly rattled, shocked, traumatized and greatly embarrassed by the ugly and nightmarish perennial flooding of portions of Trademore estate. In addition to the trauma occasioned by the injury and damage to lives and properties of our client’s subscribers from previous floodings and even the most recent flooding that occurred in June, 2023, our client has been unfairly victimised and put on the spotlight of public derision, odium, obloquy and condemnation.
23. Our client is not only concerned and disturbed that its innocent subscribers are perennially faced with this dilemma, it has also had its image and reputation constantly assailed on a daily basis. This also has the collateral damage of putting the image of the country on a global negative perception index. Yet, regrettably, the problems are caused, not by our client which had legally and legitimately applied for, received and built its estates following due process as prescribed and dictated by the Development Control of the Federal Government of Nigeria itself, by acts of government agencies and other land developers.
OUR HUMBLE PRAYERS
24. It is on the basis of the foregoing facts that our client is passionately appealing to the Permanent Secretary of the Federal Capital Authority Administration to consider the debilitating effect these needless and unprovoked demolitions have always had and will continue to have on helpless homeowners within the estate. We urge you to use your good offices to consider and implement a holistic and permanent solution to this perennial flooding of Trademore estate by granting our client’s prayers as follows:
a.To prevail on the FCT Administration and the Department of Development Control to immediately halt any further and needless demolition of houses of our client’s estate, as this is certainly not a solution to the flooding problems which your department is fully seized of.
b.To review and address viable options and solutions to the flooding menace as jointly proposed and agreed upon by the previously constituted joint Committee, which includes the relevant Departments of the FCT Administration, the Developer of Trademore Estate, Lugbe (our client), and representatives of the Residents Association in the estate. This will enable our client immediately and conclusively resolve the issue of seasonal flooding in Trademore estate in the most humane manner possible. Our client is ready, able and willing to fully co-operate with your Department to resolve the emergent issues once and for all.
c.To direct the Ecological Fund to immediately intervene in addressing the issue of expansion of existing canals for proper channelization of the flood; and to create more flood channels with a view to preventing any recurrence of flooding in and around the estate. This involves the building of a larger bridge to accommodate the flow of water in and around the estate.
25. Attached herewith for your further perusal are the following annexures which attest to our client’s valiant efforts over the years to frontally tackle and finally end this flooding menace at Trademore estate.
a. A letter was written by our client to the Vice-President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria dated the 1st day of July, 2022. The VP responded via a letter dated 13th July, 2022, and the points of agreement earlier reached between your officials and our client were comprehensively dealt with. The said response is herewith attached and marked as Annexure F.
b.Copies of the minutes of meetings held between our client and the Department of Development Control dated 22nd and 25th day of March, 2022, whose decisions have not till date been upheld by your said Department, are herewith attached and respectively marked Annexures G and H.
CONCLUSION
26. Our client humbly urges you to use your good offices to consider the sorry plight and sufferings of our client’s innocent residents in the estate and intervene timeously to save lives and properties, by halting any further demolition of residents’ houses.
27.While we await your kind and urgent response to and action on our petition and passionate appeal, please accept the assurances of our esteemed regards.
Yours Faithfully,
Prof Mike A. A. Ozekhome, SAN, OFR, CON, FCIArb, LL.M, Ph.D, LL.D, D.Litt.
Chief Counsel/Head of Chambers
