..…Says Stop Dragging His Name, Says Aide
Lucky Obukohwo, Reporting
Former President Muhammadu Buhari has disclaimed the plot of land reportedly seized by the FCTA in Abuja just as he warned against dragging his name into it.
A statement signed by Garba Shehu, a former presidential spokesman on Friday said Buhari is “personally not the owner of the said plot of the land.”
Shehu said: “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 the former president Muhammadu Buhari.
“President (Buhari) is personally not the owner of the said plot of the land which is allocated in the name a “Muhammadu Buhari Foundation.”
He said that in fact, “The Foundation was itself floated by some utilitarian individuals around him who, it must be 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 (C of O), very high in cost that did not at all compare with the bills given to similar organisations.
Shehu added, “It may have been that this was not erroneous, but a deliberate mistake, making the revocation of land as 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.”