Immediate past President, Muhammadu Buhari, has dismissed viral reports of the alleged revocation of the rights of occupancy of a plot of land purportedly belonging to him in Abuja by FCT Minister, Barrister Nyesom Wike.
In a statement released on his X handle, the former Senior Special Assistant to the former President on Media and Publicity, Malam Garba Shehu, debunked the report, saying there was nothing like loss of Buhari’s land in Abuja.
Below is the full text of the statement in which Garba Shehu gave details of the true position of things:
NOTHING LIKE LOSS OF BUHARI LAND IN ABUJA
As with anything Buhari—and there is no surprise in this at all—there is a lot of buzz in the media on the reported seizure of a piece of land by the authorities of the Federal Capital Territory Abuja, FCTA, allegedly belonging to former President Muhammadu Buhari.
The former President is personally not the owner of the said plot of the land which is allocated in the name a “Muhammadu Buhari Foundation.”
The Foundation was itself floated by some utilitarian individuals around him who, it must said, went about it in a lawful manner with the support of a number of well-meaning persons.
But they ran into a roadblock in the land department of the FCDA which handed them an outrageous bill for the issuance of the certificate of occupancy, very high in cost, that did not at all compare with the bills given to similar organizations.
It may have been that this was not erroneous, but a deliberate mistake, making the revocation of the land no surprise to anyone.
As a person, the former President has a plot of land to his name in Abuja. When he and his cabinet members were invited to fill the forms and obtain land during his tenure in office, he returned the form without filling it, saying that he already had a plot of land in the FCT, that those who did not have should be be given. He, therefore, turned down the offer.
So please let all those jumping up and down in the digital space talking about the rightfulness or the lack of it on the reported seizure of Buhari’s land in Abuja get their facts right, and stop dragging down the name of the former President.
Garba Shehu
19 December 2024