The Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) has revealed that foreign embassies and high commissions are owing ground rent worth $5.3 million for the year 2023.
FCTA disclosed this in an advertorial published in the Guardian newspaper on Tuesday.
According to the Administration, 9,671 entities and persons are owing ground rents in Abuja. It gave defaulters a two-week ultimatum to pay.
Per FCTA, the embassies and high commissions on the list alone are owing $5,368,218, with the Indonesian embassy due to pay $2,003,376.
Other entities on the list published in The Guardian today are owing a total of N2,205,079,937.
“The FCT Administration hereby reminds the general public, particularly allottees of land(s) within the FCT, of their advance, without demand to the Honourable Minister of FCT, Nyesom Wike, the annual ground rent from the first day of January of each year,” the advertorial read.
“All allottees, property owners as well as beneficiaries of the sale of Federal Government Houses in the FCT who could not pay or settle their outstanding ground rents for the year 2023, are hereby advised in their interest to ensure payment within two (2) weeks from the date of this publication.”
It further warned that failure to effect payment or settle their outstanding ground rents will lead to such titles being revoked.
The names of allottees and corresponding outstanding ground rents were listed in the advertorial.
FCTA in October 2023 revealed its plan on how to generate more revenue for the year 2024.
It said it would mobilize its revenue generating agencies to improve its Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) to as much as N250 billion monthly.
FCTA’s Mandate Secretary, Economic Planning, Revenue Generation and Public Private Partnership (EPRGPP) Secretariat, Chinedum Elechi made this known last year while briefing journalists.
“We think that FCTA has the capacity to do N250 billion a month, on a good day and that is the sort of target we are looking at,” Elechi said.
“We can even do N300 billion a month in some good periods. So that is what we want to work out.”
