61 seized houses: NSCDC denies complicity in land racketeering

The Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps, NSCDC, has distanced itself from involvement in any land racketeering in the FCT and Nasarawa State.The busted land racketeering led to seizure of 61 houses and 45 plots of land from NSCDC officials by the ICPC.The organisation denied any complicity in the scam via a statement signed by its Public Relations Officer, Mr Emmanuel Okeh, yesterday, in Abuja.The statement said: “The NSCDC Commandant-General, Dr Ade Abolurin, has emphasised for the umpteenth time that the organisation is not involved in sales of land.“The NSCDC did not at any point in time delegate persons, organisations or agents to do so on its behalf.”The statement stressed that the NSCDC did not have any land for sale, adding that it did not have any housing estate in its name as well.It quoted Abolurin as saying that the mandate of the corps as a para-military agency was to protect and safeguard the critical infrastructure of government and the country’s national assets.It listed some of the assets as petroleum pipelines, power transmission equipment and telecommunication installations, among others.“The corps, therefore, does not have any business with the purported land sales and the officers who are culpable must be sanctioned according to the law.“The corps will like to make it unequivocally clear that the property seized by the ICPC do not belong to NSCDC; rather, they belong to some indicted officers who are currently under investigations,” Abolurin was quoted as saying in the statement.The commandant-general said in the statement that prosecution of the affected officers by the ICPC had commenced.The NSCDC chief further said the seized property were purportedly acquired with proceeds of the illegal land sales by the scammers.It added that when the illicit transaction was unearthed, he personally reported the case to the ICPC for further investigations. - See more at: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2013/11/61-seized-houses-nscdc-denies-complicity-land-racketeering/#sthash.LTpJcHHh.dpuf