By Ismaila Jimoh, Abuja
The Minister of Federal Capital Territory, Barr. Nyesom Wike has expressed his displeasure over the size of land allocated to the University of Abuja, now known as Yakubu Gowon University.
Wike made this observation on Friday while inspecting the ongoing road project leading to the EFCC Academy in Giri district where the university also situated.
The Minister who on the same day had earlier carried out inspection on OSEX 15 kilometre road leading to Wassa, being constructed by CGC expressed happiness on the quality of work done so far on the two projects by the contractors.
He was very delighted to hear from contractors that the projects will be completed by May when Tinubu’s administration will clocked two year in office.
On his reaction over the 1000 hectares of land allocated to UniAbuja, the Minister had this to say: ” I have discovered and also open my eyes as to the kind of land the University of Abuja has acquired. It is not acceptable. You can’t deny development, where a university will go and take over 1,000 hectares of land, for what purpose? We have been to universities, we have gone round to schools, just the grabbing of land is not the whole thing. It is just for development purposes”.
” Before you know it, they will begin to lease it out to people. It doesn’t make sense. What makes a university is not the large expansion of land. What makes a university is the infrastructure, and the quality. It is not about land. You can have 20,000 hectares of land and the university does not have any infrastructure. So what does it help? We must stop this idea of just acquiring land for acquiring sake. That is not the essence of it.
“We have also been told that the police was also given here and nobody is kind enough to develop what we are seeing.
” If they give you land, If you develop it, fine. if you don’t develop it, the government will take it back and give it to those who want to develop. So that is our position.
But, when the Minister was asked whether by this development, the land in question stand revoked, he said: ” No, don’t jump the gun yet. Let the director of land come to me and let us discuss and invite the university and even the police why they have not been able to develop this area ” .
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