The Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Nyesom Wike, has stated that the allocations received from the Federal Government are not enough, hence, his reason for aggressively pushing for the payment of ground rent.

Wike disclosed this on Thursday during the commissioning of the newly constructed Collector Road CN2 (Zakari A. Kyari Street) from the Arterial road N11 (Ahmadu Bello Way) in Mabushi to Judges Quarters in Katampe and other roads.

He explained that the money earned from ground rent is channelled toward projects that benefit all residents of the capital city.

The Minister also disclosed that the support of President Bola Tinubu has helped him in achieving all he has done since he became a minister.

He said: “This road links to a lot of areas here and the judges quarters is also one of the areas that will benefit, so I commend the CGC for showing that it has the capacity to fulfill its promise.

“We flagged off this project in October last year and this project is supposed to be one year and twelve months but here we are, the project has been completed within eight and nine months.

“And that is why we have always said give to those who have the capacity to deliver for the benefit of the people.

“I’m sure that those who have land here now, there land will be going for 200, 300 million. But I don’t think that anybody will attempt to buy land here, you must think twice because the value of land here now is something else.

“People here will benefit from it, this is what we talk about development. Mr President has always given his support and that is why we are able to achieve what we are achieving.

“I said sometimes somewhere that for those of you who said we will sell your houses for not paying your ground rent, see the value, see the product of paying your ground rent.

“If you don’t pay, nobody will provide this infrastructure because the only thing this city has is just to collect tax and I have said it before when people say that Abuja is rich, how? Because Abuja collects from the federal account one percent of what they give federal government monthly.

“If we depend on one percent of what the federal government gets monthly, it means we can’t pay salaries or talk of carrying out infrastructural projects and that is why we are very aggrieve to say you can’t be enjoying this free of charge, you have to pay.”