ICPC investigates estate developers, recovers N53bn
The Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission has recovered N53bn from a real estate developer for the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria.
The Chairman of ICPC, Prof. Bolaji Owasanoye, who made the disclosure during a meeting with the House of Representatives Ad hoc Committee Investigating the Operations of Real Estate Developers in the Federal Capital Territory, explained that the developer took the money without providing houses for its subscribers. He stressed that the commission would always deploy its mandate against developers who took public funds with the promise to provide houses for public or civil servants without doing so.
Owasanoye, according to a statement on Sunday by the ICPC Spokesman, Mrs. Azuka Ogugua, also lamented the rising housing deficit in the country, noting that unscrupulous real estate developers in the FCT took advantage of desperate civil servants.
“The lack of openness is also creating problems. Government should at least put information in the public domain where people can easily verify details of land. A lot of people are scammed from fake layout, double allocations”.
The Chairman of the Ad hoc Committee, Blessing Onoh, observed that cases of developers defrauding would-be house owners were becoming rampant.
