AN ambitious programme that will integrate Lugbe and its adjoining communities into Phase Five of the Federal Capital city is underway and the Federal Housing Authority (FHA) estate, Lugbe will be a major beneficiary.

The plan is part of the efforts by the Federal Capital Development Authority (FCDA) to accommodate the inevitable expansion of the city towards the Nnamdi Azikwe International Airport.

The authority’s assistant General Manager, Town Planning, Hajiya Aminat Salawu who was initiated in 2010 would culminate in the renewal of the housing units and infrastructure in Lugbe Estate.

According to FHA Monthly In-house e-bulletin Salawa, “when the plan is implemented, Lugbe Estate will be better structured. It will have better facilities. Lugbe Estate will go through urban renewal and upgrading. It will become more viable. Hajiya Salawu said as the plan unfolds; it would translate to improved lives for residents of the authority’s sprawling estate laid out over 385 hectares in the area.

For instance, she said the proposed district centre for Phase Five is located within the estate as well as an oriented road that passes through and a major collector road.”

However, she warned that those facilities would occasion major physical, social and economic dislocations for residents. Already, she said the town planning section was super-imposing the structural plan of the new phase on FHA Estate’s layout and its satellite image.

Salawu explained that the step was aimed at helping the authority to determine the number of its houses and plots that would fall on the right of the way of the facilities. According to her, 500 of such housing units and plots of land had been identified, whose owners would have to be relocated.

Although the project essentially belongs to the FCTA which will bear the cost of relocation, Salawu said the authority ultimately would bear the responsibility of providing a social safety net for those concerned by the way of providing them new land. She said the FCTA was currently conducting a census of all the development in the affected area so as to be able to effect the required adjustment to the structural plan for the new Phase Five.

Centre, she added.

She identified securing the buy in of residents and providing the needed safety net to ameliorate the attendant pains of dislocation as part of the challenges the authority would grapple with.