Durumi ‘Monkey’ village removed over security threat -Official

By Stanley Onyekwere

In continuation with its renewed city sanitation drive, the FCT Administration in collaboration with police and other relevant security agencies removed a notorious settlement known as ‘Monkey’ village, within Durumi, in Area 1, Abuja.
It was learnt that the notorious settlement situated behind the old Federal Secretariat was hitherto dominated by suspected criminals, who had taken shelter there, and unleashing their criminal activities on innocent persons in the area.
This, the FCT Director of Security Services, Mr. Adamu Gwary, who lamented the level of criminalities that were hitherto perpetrated in the village, noted that it was unacceptable, as all the offices, residents must be safe and secured.
He said: “We all know the security implications of this type of shanties, where the Monkey village is harbouring criminals, and looking at the Calibre of offices, like Federal Secretariat, and you can see the proximity to these shanties and government cannot condone such illegalities and shanties and we have to ensure the government offices, residents, and other offices here are safe and secured”.
Similarly, Director, Department of Development Control, Mukhtar Galadima, said the exercise is the continuation of the city sanitation that was ordered by the Minister of FCT, Malam Muhammad Bello a few months ago.
Galadima bemoaned the abuse of land use in the area, one of such is the conversion of the road corridor to market, which according to him is unacceptable by the government and therefore must be removed.
He therefore urged all the owners of the land in that area to come and takeover their respective properties in order to stop the squatters from coming back.
Not left out, Senior Special Assistant to FCT Minister on Monitoring, Inspection and Enforcement, Ikharo Attah, said the notion that the Monkey village cannot be removed is very wrong and that is why they have metamorphosed from shanties few months ago to full fledge house built with cement and mud, cement blocks, so the village and market therefore had to go.
Attah said, “I think it is just the belief of people that the Monkey village in Area 1 cannot be removed and they have metamorphosed into full fledge house built with cement and blocks.
“The land actually belong to Nigerian Police and whatever they are planning for the future they haven’t started using it so the people moved in and they became so notorious and with criminal hideouts and today we all came in here as a team.
“On Monday, when we cleaned the other parts we discovered that people were packing their things into monkey village and we had to move in there and removed it. And the notorious monkey village is history.
“And FCDA would inform the Nigerian Police to take over their property. The FCDA has a legal backing and the Police are keen to take over the property”, he said.