The Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Muhammad Musa Bello has described the ongoing reinvigorated demolition drive in the nation’s capital as a measure to correct infractions of the Abuja Master plan, just as he thrown his weight behind the task team on city sanitation.
Bello made this known yesterday in Abuja while fielding questions from newsmen on his take on the ongoing demolition exercises in the territory.
He however, ruled out compensation for owners of illegal structures, but assured that the FCT Administration will pay for any land or structure legally acquired by authorities to provide infrastructure or public facilities.
According to him; “Is something that occurs as part of the daily work of enforcement. Unfortunately, in the recent past particularly during COVID-19 when most of the inspectorate staff were not able to cover the city, a lot of people went and started building illegal structures.
“The policies and guidelines for building in FCT is very clear and well documented ,the laws are there.
“So what we are doing is basically to remove infringements on the issue of compensation will not arise because everything is illegal.
“ For instance, people decide to build on the road corridors and in most cases some of this building you will see that the administration might have given many notices to them but they still went ahead to build the illegal structures, so we keep demolishing.
“But there are some areas as part of our urban renewal and upgrade, if we need to take off building either to expand the road corridors or create facilities for essential services for social services obviously this once will be compensated. It has always been happening”.
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