By Daniel Tyokua
The FCT Ministerial Task Force on City Sanitation has demolished the densely populated Bassan-Jiwa village, situated near the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja to curb banditry.
The Director, Department of Development Control, Murkhtar Galadima said the demolition exercise followed the expiration of the notice served to the victims two days ago.
He said about 350 structures were removed as part of the 500 uncontrolled developments marked for demolition in the area.
Galadima said : “Before marking the structures, we came for sensitisation first, thereafter, we removed them.
According to him, most of structures were residential buildings, shanties kiosks sitting on the right of way, under train bridge, and pedestrian crossing in, and around the Village, off the Airport road.
“It is part of our regular exercise to sanitise the city, and in furtherance of the Nnamdi Azikiwe Airport expansion project being awarded by the Federal Executive Council, we are to clear all these uncontrolled developments before the commencement of the project. They are over five hundred in number , and we have removed close to 350 , and we are coming to continue with the marking and removals”.
The Senior Special Assistant on Monitoring, Inspection and Enforcement to the Minister of FCT, Ikharo Attah noted that the area has a multiple level of illegality, as underneath the main train bridge connecting the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport is full of shanties, and the whole community has turned into slum becoming security threat.
“The whole community is wrongly built, thereby defacing the area, as the community has been expanding extremely. Although, good people are in the community, but the bad ones have easy access to hide and commit havoc.
“Even the chief and some of the locals agreed that Bassan- Jiwa needed to be cleaned, and we did that in respect of some of the previous markings we had in the community for resettlement and compensation of the indigenous persons there, those that were not touched, but several others were not spared , as they were removed.
“We will keep coming back here, because the FCT Minister gave us a strong marching order to actually purge all communities along the Bill Clinton Drive Airport connecting Road and several others around the city, to ensure that all shanties are cleared”, he stressed.
