The Minister of Federal Capital Territory, Malam Muhammad Bello, has explained why his administration is enforcing the policy on parks operation in the nation’s capital.
He said that his administration decided to revert to the policy in order to ensure the attainment of 40 per cent threshold of green areas in the city.
Bello gave the insight when the management of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) led by its Managing Director, Mr Buki Ponle, paid a courtesy call on him on Thursday in Abuja.
” The whole concept of the park policy is to make sure that these green areas within Abuja as a city and to some extent parts of the territory are left green to be able to meet the 40 per cent threshold of green areas.
” Abuja was way ahead of many cities in terms of climate consideration and the whole idea was that you develop these green areas to make them truly green with vegetation, with green land, flowers and trees.
” That was achieved to a large extent some years back but with population growth of the city and demand for housing and land, if we are not conscious about it then we may derail ourselves and just make it a concrete city,” he said.
Bello said that the abuse on green areas had affected the ecosystem, adding that government realised sometimes in the mid 2000 that it was simply impossible to maintain all the green areas.
This, he said, informed the concessioning of green areas to private operators to develop as parks
” A park in the real sense of a park like we see in other countries is neat, clean with sidewalks, with areas for playground for children, playground for family members and areas of relaxation.
” And everywhere in the world, these parks have opening time and closing time and normally they are done in the day time may be from 8a.m. or in some cases 7a.m. and then by night they close,” he said.
The minister stated that almost 95 per cent of those who took parks under concession converted them into structures thereby abusing them and the environment.