The FCT Minister, Malam Muhammad Bello, has urged legal practitioners and stakeholders to consider alternative dispute resolution mechanisms in resolving the numerous land cases pending in FCT courts.
The statement signed by Mr Hamzat Sule, the Chief Press Secretary to the minister, said that Bello made the call when officials of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Abuja Chapter, led by its Chairman, Mr Ezenwa Anumnu, paid him a visit in Abuja.
Bello noted that protracted land disputes gave a negative perception of Nigeria among the international community as a very difficult place to do business, He said that some land cases could have been settled, if there had been adequate discussions for out of court settlement.
Some of the cases that are pending in courts are cases that could really be sorted out just by discussions. That is why we have to encourage alternative dispute resolution mechanisms for these issues to be settled out of court.
The minister gave an assurance that institutions within the FCT Administration would be strengthened to take care of noticeable lapses and promote due process in handling all land-related matters. He said that the focus of the FCT Administration included making the process of doing business much easier in order to move Nigeriaโs level on the World Bank Business Index.
We want to move by at least 20 points from where we are now and we realized that land-related transactions constitute a very important measure of how systems are judged. This is whether they are efficient and user friendly or not.
Bello congratulated the NBA for the successful conduct of its national elections as well as the unique introduction of e-voting, saying that the NBA had always been in the forefront of bringing change in the country.
We have many of your members within the various departments of the FCT Administration and for those that I have been able to have close contacts with, I have found them to be very professional. And above all, very conscious of what society expects of them as lawyers, he emphasised.
Earlier, Anumnu said the bar was happy with the laudable strides the FCT Administration was making in terms of cleanliness and other progressive developments within the territory.
โWe are in touch with the common people in FCT and I can assure you that the responses are positive and encouraging,โ he said.
