Remove Shanties Defacing Your Neighbourhoods -FCTA Warns Landlords

By: Wisdom Acka

The Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) on Wednesday warned property owners against allowing shanties to deface their beautiful structures.

Senior Special Assistant to FCT Minister on Monitoring, Inspection and Enforcement, Ikharo Attah, gave this warning while enforcing removal of illegal structures in Kubwa and Dutse area of the FCT.

Ikharo decried a situation where beautiful neighborhoods were being littered with shanties and containers, even as he condemned building under high tension transmission wires, saying, it was hazardous to health.

“We came to Dutse and Kubwa to remove shanties and so on and it is really worrisome that you see very beautiful neighborhoods and you find shanties and containers on the streets,” he said.

“We want to warn residents not to encourage illegality on their fences and gates, it harbours criminals. We want to task residents to discourage this,” the SSA emphasized.

According to him, “Let us ensure the streets are free. We will keep coming to remove the shanties. And if they refuse to stop, we will serve the abatement notice and take them to court.”

He restated, “People, who don’t know will think we are wicked but one-day they will thank us because we are saving their lives”.

Secretary of FCTA Command and Control Unit, Peter Olumuji stated that allowing such illegal structures was encouraging the breeding of criminals in the neighborhoods.

He said: “Police records have shown that most of the crimes in neighborhoods are perpetrated by those boys you see in such shanties.”

“Most of the people living there don’t have known address and crimes are mostly perpetrated by them. We encourage neighborhood associations not to allow them to foster in their areas”, he added.