FCTA Demolition Squad Hits Okanje District
By: Wisdom Acka
After several attempts to recover illegally acquired land from grabbers, the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) finally stormed Okanje District on Friday, and demolished many of the structures.
Okanje District is one of the fast developing areas within the Federal Capital City and it is surrounded by Kabusa Community and other well designed mass housing estates.
The operation, which followed serving of several warnings and notices from the Department of Development Control against buying land from local chiefs, the FCTA finally drafted a combined team of security agents for the clean up.
Our findings revealed that the Director, Department of Development Control, Muktar Galadima, had several meetings with the Community leaders and the land grabbers towards ensuring that affected persons vacated the illegally acquired lands.
It was further gathered that all the available fallow land meant for proposed development in line with the Abuja Master Plan, had been illegally taken over by persons, who were supported by some indigenous people.
Galadima was said to have warned occupants of such illegal land, that demolition was inevitable, as FCTA was determined to stop flagrant abuses of Abuja’s Master Plan.
One of the affected illegal occupants of the land, who simply identified herself as Mrs. Osage bemoaned the reality of the demolition threat.
The distraught woman, who was seen picking personal belongings from the debris of her demolished building, sobbing, disclosed that the indigenous people deceived them into acquiring the land.
She also stated that even after the place was marked for demolition, they were deceived again to contribute money to stop the planned exercise.
“What happened is that on the 12th of April, this year, some people came here and started marking some buildings and we tried to find out why they were marking for demolition and putting notices, but they didn’t answer us and until they finished they left.
“Since that time we didn’t hear from them again, in our mind we thought when such notification is given it will take between 2-3 months before they will come back and give final notification but that wasn’t the case, we were surprised to see them this morning, removing structures, most of the owners of the houses have gone to work, they will come back from work and meet no house to enter”, she decried.
