The PIC is invested with the power to sell or lease out any property of the Federal Government but it sold the building, belonging to the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria, FRCN, without the knowledge of the owners.
The sale was blown open when the Secretary of the PIC, Bala Sanusi, appeared before an ad hoc committee of the House of Representatives, which is investigating the abandonment of Federal Government property across the country.
Speaking at the resumed investigative hearing of the committee, Sanusi said that it would not be easy for the panel to inform all the MDAs of its intention to sell or lease out the over 25,000 property handed over to it.
During his own testimony, the Director-General of the FRCN, Mansur Liman, had told the lawmakers that the property was sold without the corporation’s knowledge.
However, Sanusi explained that the building, standing on 387 square metres of land, had been razed by fire before the sale and sold as a burnt property in 2010 but was handed over to the buyers in 2019.
Asked whether the property was sold at a give-away price of N100 million because it was a burnt property, Sanusi recanted, saying he was not the secretary of the PIC at the time it was sold and, therefore, was not in a position to say whether it was burnt or not.
“We are not selling; we are leasing and after the expiration of the lease, the property will revert to the government. The mandate was initially restricted to Lagos. But later, (the) Council expanded the mandate of the committee to other states except the FCT. We have been exercising this mandate for a long time,” Sanusi said.
However, according to the Chairman of the Reps ad hoc committee, Ademorin Kuye: “We want a report on all seized assets from our leaders, particularly Abacha, in and out of Nigeria. We need to know the state of those properties and to also know if the properties have titles.”
