Hurricane Wike Storms Abuja

It only took a few hours after taking their oaths of office for Nigerians to know that a new sheriff had come to the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. Eze Nyesom Wike, the immediate past Governor of Rivers State and now Minister of the FCT, stormed the offices of the ministry and laid out his agenda in straight-speaking terms.

Within minutes all of Nigeria knew that someone earthshaking was about to happen in the FCT, which has undergone years of decay, especially under the immediate past Minister in the Muhammadu Buhari administration.

Addressing his management staff and journalists, Wike said he will demand the highest level of commitment from his staff and promised: “All those people who are distorting the master plan of Abuja, too bad! If you know you have built where you are not supposed to build, it will go down. Be you a minister or ambassador, if you know you have developed where you are not supposed to develop, your house must go down.

“Those who have taken over the green areas to build, sorry, our parks must come back. The green areas must come back. If you hate green, you hate yourself. Those who have taken over the parks and green areas as where you now do restaurants, we would not accept that. It will go down. And all those people who are doing land racketeering, that period is over.

And those that the government has allocated lands to them and they refused to develop, the land is gone. I’m going to revoke them because I don’t understand how the land that you may have paid N200,000 for, you now begin to find who will buy it for N2 billion. Who does that? We will take back our land and give it to those who want to develop and you must sign that you must develop at a certain time.”

Wike’s tough outburst immediately attracted the attention of those who labelled it as inelegant and brash. But, to those who live in and visit Abuja frequently, the city is long overdue for an ‘action’ minister that will not only right the wrongs but improve social infrastructure, which Wike has promised to do. He says he will replicate his achievements as Rivers State Governor where he was hailed as Mr Projects and won a presidential award for infrastructure development.

To make this point, he immediately commenced tours of abandoned projects and directed that they be restarted immediately. Speaking on his agenda, he said: “Before we were sworn in, Mr president had told me and the Minister of State, to do everything we can to bring back some of the structures and facilities that will make Abuja a world class city. One of them is the road network and facilities like the Millennium Tower that will bring tourists and families to come around and have fun.”

He promised to address the funding problems that delay projects for several years, saying he will rather allocate resources to a few projects and get them completed on time, else “It means that in the next 20 years, you cannot complete the project. So, what is the benefit of wasting public funds?”

FCT residents want the minister to look into social services such as public schools and health facilities for the residents, and roads and sanitation, especially in the suburbs.