Minister of FCT, Senator Bala Mohammed has called on Nigerians in the Diaspora to take opportunity of the current transformation agenda and invest in the country, particularly the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
He made the call while making a presentation to delegates attending the 2014 conference of the Nigerians in Diaspora at the Embassy Suites, Columbus, Ohio, United States of America (USA), at the weekend.
The Minister, who was represented by the Permanent Secretary of FCT, Engr. John Chukwu urged them to think more about what they can contribute to the development of Nigeria and less about what they could get from it.
He said the implementation thrust of the Transformation Agenda in FCT is to open up the Territory to unfettered private capital-driven development.
According to a statement by the SA Media to the Minister of FCT, Nosike Ogbuenyi, it was this thrust that made the FCT Administration to introduce the Land Swap programme as a catalysts for accelerated development.
He stressed that the private sector would be incentivized to provide site and services within the districts, adding that Government’s emphasis would be to provide the policy, legal regulatory environment for seamless private sector participation in the development of the districts.
The benchmark, he added is to open up by providing modern infrastructure in at least 10 new districts within five years, based on contractual Agreement with 15 Private Investors on the basis of the Land-for-Infrastructure Swap Framework.
The total land area for the development is 4,283.2 hectares and projected to require a minimum of $3.8 Billion of private sector capital; the area distance covers averagely 20 minutes from the City centre and 15 minutes from the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja.
