The Federal Capital Territory loses N800bn annually to the sharp practices by the real estate developers, the House of Representatives adhoc Committee investigating operators of the industry has declared.
The committee which condemned the illegal activities of developers in Abuja, accused the operators of scamming unsuspecting subscribers and cheating the government out of revenue.
The Chairman of the committee, Blessing Onuh, raised the issue in Abuja on Monday at the opening of a two-day workshop on the operations of real estate developers in the FCT.
Onuh said the committee discovered the shady deals during its its preliminary investigation.
She said, “This is necessitated from the hundreds of petitions submitted to this committee by the teeming members of the public who have been short-changed by dubious developers operating freely in the industry.
“A pathetic case is the case of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria, which paid over N4.2bn to a developer since 2019 and has yet to get even one house delivered to its staff (members)…and there are thousands of similar cases.”
Onuh said the committee is considering the enactment of consumer protection laws relating to the real estate sector.
The lawmaker said the committee, within the short period of the probe, had found that the level of impunity by developers across the sector was unprecedented.
She said, “To discuss the economy of the real estate industry, we shall clearly articulate the value chain in this multi-trillion naira industry and identify why the FCT has not been getting its fair share from the trillion-naira transactions that have been consummated in the industry since the revolution.
