A whirlwind of demolitions has hit Abuja suburbs leaving trails of anguish, lamentations and hopelessness amongst traders and residents from Airport Road to Mpape.
Led by the Taskforce Chairman on City Sanitation, Mr Ikharo Attah, bulldozers have pulled down structures, both residential and commercial in Iddo, Nyanya and now Mpape.
Chinedu Chibueze, 39, a trader at Mpape, a sprawling slum opposite the highbrow Maitama district of Abuja, said he lost his business place to the demolition exercise that commenced Wednesday in the area.
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He said he could not evacuate his goods worth millions of naira when the bulldozers roared into the suburb and pulled down hundreds of structures, mostly shops, along the snaky road leading into Abuja’s giant slum.
He said he had been running his business there for almost seven years and never thought a bad day like that would come.
He said: “I have lost three shops along this axis and it is really tough to accept the reality of it all. Though we were given notice for the evacuation, but there was nowhere to go and we had to make ends meet. If we don’t open shops, we won’t have food to eat for the day. The experience is really bad and we are traumatised.’’
Mr Chibueze lamented that he had lost all his investments and source of livelihood.
“My goods alone, at least, are worth N7 million and I couldn’t recover most of them as area boys or scavengers have looted them, they came in the guise of helping and I was only able to recover few of the goods,” he added.
Asked why despite the evacuation notice given to them by authorities’ penultimate week before the demolition, he still didn’t evacuate his goods, he said he wanted to recover his investment before leaving the place.
“We are just recovering from COVID-19 economic setback, house rent, and we are battling with children’s school fees and everything is gone now and I am just starting afresh, it’s really bad. I don’t know where to start again. Why, in the first place, should they allow people to invest so much and then come and destroy everything,” he decried.
“We are calling on the government to compensate us for what we have lost. They should compensate us in any way. This is where we feed our children and eke out a living from.
“I employed more than 20 staff and I pay them between N20, 000 and N50, 000 each. I was running a retail store and I do wholesale,” he said.
Sunday Frank, 30, who had a telecommunications business in Mpape for more than 13 years, said when the officials first came to the market, they marked the places they’d demolish but when they commenced the demolition exercise on Wednesday, they extended to unmarked buildings, including his shop.
“In fact, they caught us unawares. When they came for the demolition, they went beyond where they had already marked and encroached on another area where they didn’t inform people that they’re going to touch. In normal circumstances, they should have informed us that they could reach us but that wasn’t the case.”
“I lost my property and I couldn’t get anything out because of the shock. When they arrived, I was trying to pack my goods but the army and task force officials surrounded the area and we had no other option than to run away from the place and scavengers moved in and made away with items from the shop. I was only able to take the system I use. I lost everything to the scavengers. The goods I lost were worth approximately two to three million naira,” he recalled.
I am a family man with three children who are still underage and the shop was my only source of income.
I can’t say that I have lost my livelihood because they are not God, but what they have done has caused so much damage to me,” he added.
He said that they couldn’t contact anybody from the government for possible compensation and they were also neither contacted to that effect but that all hope was not lost in that regard.
A Point of Sales (POS) stall owner who simply identified himself as Isaac, said having been notified about the demolition, they had since evacuated all the contents of their shop from the site marked, hence the loss they incurred was minimal.
“They started the demolition from the site where shops were erected before coming to our side. I only lost a stand for my POS business and scavengers took away the umbrella. I can put the amount of the loss as less than N30, 000.
“The experience is very bad as many have lost their means of livelihood. The devastation there couldn’t be estimated really.”
“I am calling on the government that anytime they’re about to embark on such exercise, let them look for a place, develop it and relocate people like they did in Apo,” he added.
But Mr Attah, justifying the demolitions, said it was aimed at bringing sanity to the fast-growing capital city.
He said if people were left to do whatever they wanted, the city would turn into a very big slum and life would become chaotic for everyone living in the city.
Attah further explained that the exercise was part of efforts of the FCT Administration to rid the nation’s capital of environmental nuisance and that it was also a strategy to curb criminality in the territory.
“The major illegalities identified here are worship centres, shops, shanties, and other illegal structures built on road corridors.”
“The demolition of such environmental nuisance started on Wednesday in which we are able to clear a number of shanties and containers by the roadside and deep inside the Mpape market.”
“Similarly, today we carried out a major operation and cleared illegal structures and others that were extended to the road shoulders and we shifted them back.
“We also shifted part of the market back and we were able to do what we did here today, knowing that the exercise will last for three weeks,” he said.
Meanwhile, the FCT Administration has promised to look into the outcry of the victims of the demolitions.
Permanent Secretary of the FCT, Mr Olusade Adesola, made the commitment at a Sensitisation Campaign on the Recent Removal of Illegal Structures in the FCT.
Adesola, who was represented at the event by the Director Permanent Secretary’s Office, Mr Udoh Samuel Anang, assured that the FCT Administration under the leadership of Malam Muhammad Musa Bello, will ensure that all those with genuine grievances and complaints are attended to.
He, therefore, appealed to all those affected in one way or the other to remain calm and law-abiding.
“May I draw the attention of this important audience to the fundamental reasons that necessitated the relocation of the nation’s capital from Lagos to Abuja. Some of such include; unplanned urban layouts, indiscriminate construction of residential and commercial structures, among others.
“You will all agree with me that if not for constant and courageous operations in the enforcement of physical development in Abuja, the city would have become a major slum by now,” he said.
FCT Commissioner condemns demolition
Meanwhile, the Commissioner for Public Complaints Commission (PCC), representing the FCT, Ezikel Musa Dalhatu, has condemned the demolition of some houses, including clinics and churches at Iddo-Sabo, along Airport Road, Abuja.
Dalhatu, while speaking with newsmen on Friday after he inspected some houses that were demolished at Iddo-Sabo, along Airport road, Abuja noted that it was wrong for the ministerial task force of the Development Control of the FCDA to demolish people’s houses without prior notice.
He said as the PCC commissioner, his major role was to ensure justice prevail and peoples’ rights are not trampled upon, even as he said he was happy that no death or injury was recorded during the demolition.
By Terkula Igidi, Dalhatu Liman & Abubakar Sadiq Isah
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