The federal government has ordered buyers of two underpriced public properties in Lagos to pay the differentials of the real values of the properties as at 2001.
The minister of Works and Housing, Mr Babatunde Fashola, disclosed this on Wednesday to State House Correspondents after the week’s Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting, presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari, at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
According to him, the council arrived at the decision following a memorandum he presented to the Council, in which he revealed that the government was short-paid in the transaction on the properties seized by officials of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA).
He said the properties, a four-bedroom bungalow on Adeniyi Jones Lagos, and another five-bedroom duplex on Amadasun Street in GRA, Ikoyi, Lagos, sold for N2 million and N5 million respectively were seized by the NDLEA in the course of narcotic prosecution.
He said the government now wants the buyers to pay the sum of N18 million for the bungalow and N21 million for the five-bedroom duplex being the cost at which they were valued in 2001.
He said, “They were properties sold as a result of prosecution for narcotics by NDLEA. So, they were proceeds of drug crimes, but the valuation process followed the NDLEA Act instead of the Financial Regulations Act. So essentially, those policy proposals were approved by the government.
“At that time, the valuation we got was that if they were properly valued, they should have been sold for N18m and N20m respectively.”
He noted that the NDLEA Act of the time gave precedence to the directives from the Ministry of Justice and regulations were made according to powers under the Act.
“But they did not take cognizance of the procurement law and the financial regulations of the time.
“So, we are now saying, going forward, the financial regulations must take precedence. So, those are all proposals that will come as a new law when the Ministry of Finance finishes with them so that you cannot have different regulations for the disposal of assets that have been forfeited to the government. They must be subject to one superior procedure,” he added. (Leadership)