By Stanley Onyekwere
The Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) has stormed Gishiri community, within the neighbourhood of Maitama District, demolishing several shelters of suspected criminal elements.
This, was even as it vowed to go harder on illegal squatters as a measure to control influx of people into the city.
Explaining the exercise, Senior Special Assistant on Monitoring, Inspection and Enforcement to FCT Minister, Ikharo Attah, who led the team said while the administration will not stop Nigerians to migrate and live in Abuja, illegal structures can’t be allowed to deface the city.
Attah noted that Gishiri community has a close proximity to the highbrow Maitama District, hence the need to strictly regulate human activities there.
He disclosed that the administration has received several complaints of security breeches emanating from the community.
According to him: “The influx of people are responsible for the increasing shanties, they are even taking over the streets. People who come into Abuja, can stay in the suburb than coming to places where they live under trees, bridges everywhere. We won’t condone that.
“ We are carrying out this exercise because we got a lot of complaints over the weekend. And as you can see, shanties have started springing up from the community up to the Maitama junction.
“ That is why we had to quickly come and clear them, because they serve as safe haven to criminals. Criminals hang around in these shanties to attack the neighbourhood”.
Also speaking, the Assistant Director of Enforcement in Abuja Environmental Protection Board, Kaka Bello said the shanties in Gishiri had been demolished several times, but deviant people continue to erect more.
Bello noted that the enforcement won’t be stopped until people begin to respect the rules of the city.
He added that apart from the shanties destroying the Environmental beauty of the city, they equally contribute to the festering insecurity which all relevant agencies have been confronting.
