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…Enforcement team seals hotel
By Tanimu Muhammad
Following the incessant violation of the inter-state travel ban and the mass movement of human cargo in dehumanising conditions in their trucks, Chairman of the FCT COVID 19 Enforcement Team has lamented and warned that the organisation must call her drivers to order.
This as the Enforcement Team got a conviction to seal off a hotel in Abuje that has been in default of the COVID 19 protocols.
Lamenting the situation, Ikharo Attah, Chairman, FCT COVID 19 Enforcement Team, while speaking with journalists in Abuja said Dangote trucks have been notorious for loading humans in between goods and defying the President’s ban on inter-states travels.
He lamented that it cannot not be proper to load humans in between goods like onions, pepper, cement and covered in tarpaulin.
The latest compliant, he said was the team’s visit to the Nasarawa border of the FCT and their discovery:
“We went to the Abuja/Nasarawa border post yesterday, we got some persons there saying that they left Akwanga heading to Zamfara, carrying some food items and when we opened the tarpaulin, we saw over 50 persons. We turned them back to Akwanga where they were coming from.”
Attah further lamented the harrowing experience of those who are on essential service and needed to enter the FCT from the Nadarawa point, adding those people spent hours waiting in the queue.
On the recalcitrant hotel management, Attah noted: ” Last weekend we got a report that a wild and an elaborate party held at the Pacific Hotel and Guest Inn, Nyanya area of the FCT. We sent security operatives the next day to go there and check. And when the team went was there, they saw a large crowd of people in the bar eating and drinking without observing the COVID 19 protocol.
“Some of them were arrested while others ran away. Those arrested were taken to mobile court and the mobile court judge, Chief Magistrate Idayat Akani, fined them N5, 000 and they engaged them in community service.
We asked the manager why they disobeyed the lockdown order. He said owmer of the hotel gave order that the hotel must remain open and parties and other activities should be allowed to go on.
So we prayed the Judge to grant us an order to seal up the hotel which the Judge graciously granted and we went there today and carried out the court order.
The hotel remains closed until when the chairman and management of the hotel appear before the Judge and the judge gives a verdict or vacate the closed down order, that is the hotel will be reopened