FCT Minister to directors: ‘You’re liars, incompetent’

By Stanley Onyekwere

The minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Senator Abdulkadir Mohammed, has lashed out at operational directors in charge of metropolitan management services in the Territory, saying they have been telling lies about their capacity to deliver on their mandates.

He lamented that as the leader of this administration of the FCT, he felt highly disgusted, as the FCTA have almost become a talking shop, without visible result.

However, he urged non-performing officers to resign, otherwise they will be shown the exit door, as the FCT administration is ready to sack them.

Specifically, the minister lampooned those involved in the area of environmental sanitation, water resource management and distribution, road traffic control and management services in the FCT, for allowing it to degenerate to what it is today.

“You (Directors) told me that all parts of the city are clean, and it is not true, and we have gone round with you, and you have seen that it is not.

“You told me that there are no street traders, but there are street traders everywhere; you told me that there are no beggars, and we saw them everywhere; you told me that there are no okada riders, in fact okada are more than the vehicles.

“So definitely, what they (directors) have told us (me and you), are not true,” Bala told journalists yesterday, after a monitoring and the spot assessment of projects and social services in the nation’s capital He added that, the attitude of the residents, whom the operational agencies and departments of the FCTA are enforcing the laws on, have contributed to the incapacity of the directors and other administrative heads, including security agencies, to effectively implement FCT bylaws.

To this end, the minister announced plan to inaugurate a taskforce committee drawn from more than eleven operational departments, to be chaired by the FCT Commissioner of Police, Joseph Mbu, on Thursday.

“Certainly, sometimes people believe that unless you bite or persecute, and do what is unusual to people, they will not listen.

“But most importantly, the CP and other security agencies along with operational department of the FCTA are ready to work together, not in the manner of the regular task force that works in an ad hoc and casual manner, this time around, we are going to do it right from the onset and sustain it with minimal cost, as part of our statutory responsibilities.

“We have been talking and talking about enforcing simple metropolitan management services, especially environmental sanitation, water resource management and distribution, road traffic control and management.

“It is not that we can rusticate officers, because even today at the Executive meeting of the FCTA, I read the riot act to them; that anybody who feels that he or she cannot capture our vision and passion, should humbly resign, otherwise my patience and that of my minister of state is getting exhausted.

“All the information they have been giving me are lies, because I’m getting my information from other sources too.

“Of course Mr. President had had to call me and the minister of state (FCT) and the permanent secretary to explain and to draw our attention to all the menace in the FCT, I felt highly embarrassed,” he said.