Residents Lament As FCTA Demolishes Illegal Structures In Abuja

Officials from the Development Control Department of the Federal Capital Territory Administration on Wednesday demolished some illegal structures located along the Corner shop Area of 2nd Avenue in Gwarinpa.

According to the owners of structures, officials of the FCTA Development Control stormed the area and started demolishing the make-shift buildings without any prior notice about the exercise.

Speaking to THE WHISTLER, a shop owner who gave her name as Doris stated that the demolition took them by surprise as no notice was given to them

She said, “I was inside cooking when they came, I rushed out in fear when I saw people running. I had to pack some of the things I could. The FCT Development Control came to destroy our things with no prior information, no letter or whatsoever before the demolition.

“The police that came with them were spraying teargas and even threatened to shoot anybody that tries to take pictures or make video of the demolition.”

Another shop owner also noted that they were surprised at the turn out of event, because there was no prior notice as regard the demolition.

Officials of the FCTA Development Control could not be reached for comments as of the time of filing this report,
Calls made to the Spokesperson of the Agency, Grace Zamani, were not taken while a text message sent to her were not responded to as of the time of filing this report.

Recall that the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Mohammad Bello, had in November 2021 announced that demolition of illegal structures would be done in Abuja to correct infractions of the city’s master plan.

Bello had noted that most of the infractions happened during COVID-19 lockdown, when the inability of the inspectorate staff to cover the city gave room for many people to start erecting illegal structures.

“The policies and guidelines for building in FCT is very clear and well documented, the laws are there. 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,” he stated.

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