…warns buyers of illegal land
By Chioma Nnodim
After several failed attempts to recover illegally acquired land from grabbers, the Federal Capital Territory Administration, FCTA, on Friday stormed Okanje District demolishing many structures.
Okanje District is one of the fastly developing areas within the Federal Capital City and surrounded by Kabusa Community and other well designed mass housing estates.
The operation, coming sequel to several warnings and notices from the Department of Development Control, was empowered by a combined team of both the military and paramilitary forces, last for several hours.
The demolition operation also came on the heels of warnings from the FCT Administration that buying land from local chiefs, was a risky venture and total economic sabotage.
It was gathered that the Director, Department of Development Control, Muktar Galadima has had meetings with both Community leaders and the land grabbers, with the aim of ensuring that affected people vacate the illegally acquired lands.
It was further learnt that all the available fallow land meant for purposed development in line with the Abuja Master plan, had been illegally taken over by people with the help of some indigenous people.
Galadima was said to have warned occupants of the 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 picking her personal belongings from the debris of her demolished build, with tears, disclosed that the indigenous people deceived them into acquiring the land.
She also said, that after the place was marked for demolition, they were deceived again to contribute money to stop the planned exercise.
She noted, ” what happened is that on the 12 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 added.