The Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) has registered 11,000 Apo Mechanic Village merchants and craftspeople to move to the permanent location in Wasa District, Abuja.
This was said by Chief Felix Obuah, Coordinator of the Abuja Metropolitan Management Council, or AMMC, at a meeting with stakeholders on Thursday in Abuja.
According to Mr. Obuah, the purpose of the meeting was to give updates on the current count of traders and craftspeople in Apo Mechanic Village who will be moving to Wasa.
Among other things, he added, the gathering was to discuss the site plans and design.
He stated that the registration fee for the Wasa space allotment was N300,000, and that 11,000 people had already received the form and paid for it.
He was worried, too, that some suspicious people were using the circumstance to blackmail gullible traders.
He clarified that the unnamed persons, who included some union leaders of the craftsmen and dealers, were taking N650,000 from the traders instead of the N300,000 that FCTA had authorized.
I came here to explain what we are doing because people are in a dire situation.
“I will carry every stakeholder along in every process, and at the end, whoever is allocated a shop in the permanent site, his or her name will be published,” he said.
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The coordinator warned that anyone caught collecting money from unsuspecting traders, including those not on the road corridor and promising them land, would be arrested and prosecuted.
While acknowledging the difficulties faced in dealing with the traders, Obuah noted that over 45,000 names were submitted initially by different unions.
Describing the lists as “inflated”, the coordinator said that the blotted names, among other false claims, have made the council to conduct physical enumeration of the affected traders.
“We have invited the stakeholders of Apo traders, mainly all the association heads, to tell them how far we have gone in the relocation processes.
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To update them on our progress in the relocation procedures, we have gathered Apo merchants’ stakeholders, primarily all of the association leaders.
“We explained to them the purpose of the form, the purpose of the enumeration, the number of people who have paid, and our future plans,” the coordinator continued.
He clarified that traders in the buffer zones and on the road corridor were the primary beneficiaries of the relocation.
He claimed that after it was discovered that the majority of union leaders had taken money from Apo mechanic village residents who had no business there, the meeting was required.
Mr. Obuah promised that the enumeration and registration process will be finished by the end of November.
