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Monday Reuben, Abuja
DAILY COURIER - The Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Nyesom Wike, has declared the on-street parking scheme in the FCT, popularly called park-and-pay, illegal.
Wike, who stated this on Wednesday in Abuja during a media briefing to mark his first year in office as the FCT Minister, cited irregularities in the contract agreement between the managing contractors of the scheme and the FCT.
Stating that he was unaware of the scheme before a friend pointed it out to him, Wike said he probed further to discover that the agreement had stipulated an 80 per cent payback to the contractors, while only 20 per cent of the total will be remitted to the FCT.
He said, “A friend of mine, a senior advocate, called me and said: ‘Sir, people came to our office now trying to hijack all our cars. They said they are from the transport secretariat’. I said, what is that? Give the person the phone. I said who are you and he said from park and pay. What do you mean by park and pay? I park in my house and I pay?
“I called the mandate secretary of transport secretariat. I said who introduced the park and pay? What does it mean? Who collects the money? Unknown to us, there was an agreement between the secretariat and some people who say they are consultants. Consultants? I said okay, consultant takes 80 percent and the government takes 20 percent? Where is this 20 per cent being paid to the government?”
The Park-And-Pay policy
The FCT administration had in July 2012 introduced the Park and Pay System for car owners, an initiative to curtail excessive cars on the city’s expansive roads.
According to the policy, designated parking spaces were created on busy highways, marked out in white lines, and motorists parking on these spots are charged a fixed fee per parking, ranging between N50 for 30 minutes and N650 for 12 hours.
The policy was suspended in 2014 but was reintroduced by the in August 2023 by the FCT administration after signing an agreement with some contractors to decongest the city.
