Civil rights advocacy group, Human Rights Writers Association Of Nigeria (HURIWA), has urged Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Nyesom Wike to forego the completion of the Abuja Tower project and deploy the humongous cash earmarked for it to build mass/low costs houses.
Also, the group advised the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) to introduce mechanisms for support of SMEs operating in Abuja, and upgrading of primary health care and primary schools domiciled in the rural communities of the FCT, which are in very bad shape.
HURIWA said it was even better to inject the funds into making the FCT clean and green, planting more trees and flowers, and restoring the original master plan that created Green Areas and natural parks, which have mostly been misused by the Development Control cartel within the FCTA to advance their selfish commercial purposes.
According to the National Co-ordinator of HURIWA, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, the Abuja Tower is a white elephant project, which right from conception and its shady implementation, represents a money-guzzling machine, a cesspool of corruption for officials and their contractors friends to line their pockets with easy money.
He said the Federal Capital Territory landscape is dotted with natural edifices, sites and sounds that, if harnessed by the FCT Administration, would be the best tourism potential than the millennium project, which has zero economic value to the Nigerian masses.
HURIWA told Minister Nyesom Wike that foreign tourists, coming mostly from Western civilisations and advanced societies like the UK, USA, Canada, and Australia are already sick and tired of living in their skyscrapers and gigantic buildings even much taller than the Abuja Tower, adding that it doubted if any serious tourists from Western societies would spend their hard-earned cash to come to see Abuja Tower.
The rights group said foreign tourists from rich societies often prefer visiting natural habitats, which the group believes abound in many areas of the FCT, which the politicians running government should harness and commercialise for profitability.
HURIWA suggested that the government can at best privatize the project as it is now and put the huge funds to be frittered in completing it towards achieving affordable mass housing schemes for Abuja residents and civil servants working for Federal Government agencies located in the FCT, standardisation of health and educational institutions for rural children.
THEWILL recalls that the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Nyesom Wike, said the iconic Millennium Tower, which has been abandoned due to paucity of funds, would be completed in the next two years. He disclosed this after a closed-door meeting with contractors handling different projects in the FCT, adding that
“it is going to be one of the legacy projects for President Bola Tinubu, ” for which, “we are going to structure our payment is agreeable with the
contractor”
The Millennium Tower that straddles the Central Business District in Abuja is a tourist site designed to showcase the country’s unity and strength and provide study and relaxation.
HURIWA recalled that in 2022, the Federal Government said that $400 million would be required to complete the 170 metres high tower construction started in 2005 by Salini Construction Nigeria Limited and expressed its readiness to send to the Minister, pictorials that it took from different primary schools in the nation’s capital a few months back, which are in dilapidated conditions that urgently should be upgraded with some of the money instead of diverting scarce resources to build projects that would ultimately not benefit the economy of the country as a collective.
