By Ben Adoga
The Federal Capital Territory Administration, FCTA, has given residents of Mpape Community a two-week demolition notice, before its bulldozers would be berthing there in continuation of the ongoing city-wide cleaning exercise.
The FCT Ministerial Committee on city sanitation, Ikharo Attah, who made this disclosure Tuesday, noted that the purported directive from a commissioner of the Public Complaints Commission that demolition within the city should be halted, can’t prevent the removal of all illegal structures constituting environmental nuisance.
He said that the two-week notice was in line with the policy of FCT Administration to carry all relevant stakeholders along and to sensitise all affected communities, while ensuring maximum compliance.
Attah explained that moving the bulldozers to Mpape for the clean-up, was in response to the cry of the residents who had complained that activities of traders and mechanics, illegally occupying the road corridors, were obstructing traffic flows.
According to him, after the 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, block-making industries and all the attachments 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 peoples 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 percent of the demolished buildings were actually owned by uniformed people,” Attah added.