The Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA), on Tuesday, issued a two-week ultimatum to residents of the Mpape community to remove all illegal structures, especially on the road, in continuation of the ongoing city-wide cleaning exercise.
Chairman, FCT Ministerial Committee on City Sanitation, Mr Ikharo Attah, who gave this warning in Abuja, said the purported directive from a Commissioner of Public Complaint Commission that demolition within the city should be stopped, cannot prevent the removal of all illegal structures constituting environmental nuisances in the city.
He said the two weeks notice was in line with the policy of the FCT Administration to carry all relevant stakeholders along in sensitising all affected communities, and ensuring maximum compliance.
According to him, after two weeks, all illegal structures along the road would be demolished, to save the people from any untoward situation that could threaten both human lives and the environment.
“We will be entering Mpape in the next two weeks. We have asked them to remove whatever is on the roadside. The beauty of the exercise is that it was the Landlords and tenants who wrote to the minister to come for the demolition.
“They said the whole road stretch is not passable, a journey from Mpape to the city centre that should take six or seven minutes is now one or two hours because of traffic gridlock.
“We are moving into Mpape with up to six bulldozers to remove every nuisance. It is going to be massive removal of illegal containers occupying the road shoulders, all mechanic workshops, car wash and block industries and all the attachment that people have located on the road.
“We are also going to ensure that all undeveloped plots of land along the road shoulders are left empty so that activities there will not flow to the road.
“The alleged directive from a Commissioner of the Public Complaint Commission did not mention Mpape, the Commissioner referred to the exercise at Iddo Sarki, where some people alleged that we demolished indigenous people’s houses.
“The commissioner has gone to the community and discovered that no house belonging to any indigene was demolished.
“I can state that not a single house belonging to an Abuja indigene was demolished. The houses that were demolished at Iddo Sarki were all houses built by people who illegally bought land from local Chiefs. Over 90 per cent of the demolished buildings were actually owned by uninformed people,” he insisted.
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