Abuja as a growing city is faced with a lot of challenges, many of them bothering on infrastructure. CATHERINE AGBO reports that shopping malls and public buildings in the city have little or no provision for parking of cars in their facilities.
“There was a day I went to the office of one of the telecomm service providers in Wuse II to subscribe for internet service. I parked in front of the building because there wasn’t enough parking spaces in the building even for the staff.
“My laptop computer was on the back seat so I used my blazer to cover it as I was already concerned for its safety. When I came out after making the payment, I picked the blazer to put it back on and to my uttermost dismay, the laptop computer had disappeared. I was confused, I thought I was losing my mind, I searched everywhere, including my trouser pockets and at the end of the day, I had to face the truth, that my car had been burgled.”
This is the story of Paschal Ike (not real Name), who had his car burgled outside a public building in Abuja recently.
Ike’s case is not an isolated one.
A drive round Abuja shows public buildings and shopping malls without adequate provision for parking cars within the buildings.
The consequence of this is cars parked on the roads, some in designated parking spaces, while others left with no space to park leave their cars on the road, causing traffic congestion.
On Gimbiya and Port-harcourt streets in Area 11, where banks, public and private offices, buildings, hotels and schools are located, the situation is quite bad as apart from parking on the streets, some members of staff of these organisations have to park along Ahmadu Bello Way, leaving their cars at the mercy of burglars and other cars who may hit them and run away.
Recently, the FCT Department of Development control, gave an ultimatum to premises on Gimbiya and Port-harcourt Street to revert parking spaces in their premises to their original use or face sanctions.
Mr George Ogar tells the story of his friend who lost a car he parked outside a popular eatery on Gimbiya Street.
“It was a Friday night and my friend who lives in Kaduna came into Abuja to attend the wedding ceremony of a mutual friend. I was at this ‘joint’ on Gimbiya Street so I asked him to join me there.
“he met me there together with his girlfriend and we were there for about two hours and when it was time to go, my friend came out only to discover that his car was no longer where he had parked it earlier. He raised and alarm and we all started looking for the car under cars, in the gutter and other unimaginable places.”
Ogar blamed the loss of the car on the fact that there was no parking space in the ‘joint’ to park; otherwise, his friend would not have lost his car.
“My friend would not have lost his car if only it was parked inside the premises and he had his eyes on it. A situation where people build and fail to reserve some space for car park is very bad and something needs to be done about it urgently.”
The situation is not different in other parts of town. In Wuse II District, where many businesses are clustered, people have a hard time finding spaces to park their cars when they want to do business. They are constrained most of the time to park farther away from where they want to go to, and walk to the business location.
While some shopping malls have limited parking space, some are built with no space reserved for parking.
A sales girl at EMAB Plaza, Wuse II, who craved anonymity told LEADERSHIP that her proprietor was considering relocating the shop to another part of town as customers often shied away from shopping there due to lack of parking space in the plaza.
“As you can see, we are doing clearance sales. My Madam said she wants to sell everything and close the shop because customers have been complaining that when they come here, they do not find spaces to park their cars.
“The problem of parking in the plaza is a serious one. On many occasions, people have quarrelled here either because someone hit their car while trying to squeeze into a space or that a car was parked behind theirs and blocked them from going out when they wanted to,” she said.
A guard at the plaza, Musa Ahmed, said to check the problem of parking in the plaza, they had devised a means of allowing people to park and block others, provided they can drop their phone numbers.
“We are aware of the problem of parking here so we understand when people park behind or beside other cars. But we ask them to drop their phone numbers on the car, so that the person they are blocking can call them whenever they want to go out.”
A property expert, Hadiza Awwal, attributes the situation to the high cost of land which makes people want to maximise every space to the best use.
She said property developers cannot afford the luxury of reserving large parking spaces, due to the high cost of land.
“The best thing is for the government to operate parking lots in the city, where people can park their cars rather than park along the road, even if it is at a cost,” she said.
The issue of parking spaces in the FCT is an untapped goldmine, especially as it concerns revenue generation, considering the dwindling revenue of the FCT and budgetary shortfall.
The Sen ate President, David Mark recognises this. During the inauguration of the Senate committee on the FCT recently, he charged the committee to come up with legislation that would see to the creation of park and ride spaces in the FCT , as one way of boosting the IGR profile.
VIO places a fine of N10,000 for parking in unauthorised places and N25,000 for parking on lawns and pedestrian walkways.
At a recent function, secretary FCT Transportation Secretariat, Jonathan Ivoke said the administration was putting in place modalities to open up some park and ride spaces as well as parking lots in the city, following which free on street parking will be banned and violators would be met with heavy sanctions.
What development control department says about buildings without adequate parking spaces.
When LEADERSHIP contacted the public relations officer of the FCT department of development control, Mrs. Josie Mudasiru, she said in approving building plans, there were specifications for parking spaces in the buildings, depending on the use of the building.
According to her, the specification for shopping malls was for the developer to allot two parking spaces each for every shop in the mall.
But have the developers been complying with this directive?
Mudasiru said it had come to the notice of the department that some property owners had converted parking spaces to other use but said a task force had been put in place to ensure compliance.