The Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) has demolished over 500 illegal houses belonging to non-indigenes of Abuja in Zamani village located in Abuja Municipal Area Council (AMAC).
Ikahro Attah, senior special assistant on monitoring, inspection and enforcement to the minister of FCT disclosed this when he he spoke to journalists during the exercise.
He said the indigenous houses were spared because they were living in Abuja before creation of the capital city.
He explained that the FCT minister, Malam Muhammad Bello, directed that all illegal expansion of indigenous villages should be halted immediately.
“Sadly, people who should have gotten legal lands in other parts of the city come to buy land here, with agreement written on full scarp sheets, believing that the government would not come. And when the government comes, people will defend them,” he said.
“The irony is that we discovered that many people invested wrongly in a very painful manner. We saw hundreds of structures that were illegally built, we had to remove them and restore the master plan and check insecurity and also nature development in the city.
“It is not true that the indigenous houses were demolished, the ones that were partly touched were immediately stopped. Anyone who said the indigenous houses were demolished is not serious. Even the non-indigenes are very angry that we did not touch the indigenous houses.
“The indigenes are the ones that have rights because we met them in Abuja and until when they are resettled and compensated, the other ones do not have rights and they invested their funds wrongly.”
Similarly, the director, development control department, Mr. Murkhtar Galadima denied on the spot bribery allegation against FCTA staff, saying it did not stop them from doing their jobs.
“We are demolishing illegal structures all over Abuja. There are over 500 illegal houses that were demolished today alone. It is just an allegation but it is not true. You could see that no houses were spared, it is only indigenous houses that were spared, whether you give someone money does not matter, that is why I said it is not true,” he said.
“Even those we marked some people tried to cover up our markings and we removed those structures. We have not finished the exercise and we will finish it tomorrow.”