Vandalism: Candido Bemoans Citizens’ Behaviour, Blames Contractor

Abdullahi Adamu Candido, FCT Secretary of Transportation

By: Wisdom Acka

Non-chalant and destructive attitude of some Nigerians towards public facilities is condemnable and must change to enable citizenry fully benefit from such public facilities.

Secretary, FCT Transportation Secretariat, Abdullahi Adamu Candido expressed this discontent, while inspecting the Abuja Light Rail Mass Transit facilities in the nation’s capital yesterday.

Visibly appalled by the monumental vandalization of critical facilities of the rail system, Candido said: “The vandalism is voluminous. The magnitude of damage done by these vandals is not pleasing at all. Unfortunately, they have brought us backward as far as this effort is concerned”.

“But fortunately, we have an administrator (Mallam Muhammad Musa Bello), who is committed to leaving a legacy and that is why we are here -to take a look at it so that we will know how to tackle it within a space of seven months,” he added.

The Secretary also apportioned some of the blames to the Chinese company handling the project; saying, “to some extent, I have to put the blame on CCECC for not doing the needful from the word go, by withdrawing the armed soldiers who were ensuring the security of this place”.

His words: “Withdrawing them brought us to this point. You can’t withdraw armed soldiers and replace them with unarmed personnel and expect to have the same result, because the vandals can take advantage of this and that was exactly what they did”.

Some of the vandalized facilities include rail tracks, signalling and communication equipments made up of sensitive cables and fittings, generating sets and air-conditioning systems, among several others.

He, however, could not estimate the cost of repairs of the damage, since inspection and verification were still on.

“I cannot quantify it in terms of how much we are going to use to resuscitate it, but we are going to take a look at it and present it to the Minister,” Candido buttressed.

According to him, “Despite the fact that it (damage) is too voluminous, I am convinced that the Minister has it in mind to leave a legacy. We need to look for a way forward”.