By Abdullahi Muhammad, Abuja
The FCT Administration yesterday took its strategic clean up operation to Karu Community, in Abuja Municipal Area Council (AMAC), demolishing several shanties and attachments erected along road corridors in the area.
Mostly affected were containers and other attachments hitherto used for commercial activities along the road corridors and around the Karu Cemetery as well as uncompleted shopping mall inside the Karu Community Health Centre, near the abattoir, linking the Old Karu road to the busy Nyanya-Karshi Road axis of the Abuja-Keffi expressway.
Officials of the FCTA enforcement team explained that the exercise was carried in order to mitigate distortions to vehicular and human traffic, encroachment into healthcare facility and destruction of the Cemetery as well as land use contraventions in the area.
According to Comrade Ikharo Attah, the Senior Special Assistant on Monitoring, Inspection and Enforcement to the FCT Minister, offensive infractions had been causing human and vehicular obstructions in the area.
Attah said about five months leading up to the removal exercise, people in the area were given notices, saying “even markings on the walls depict that fact.
“Generally speaking, we have addressed both traffic issues, encroachment into healthcare facility and destruction of the Cemetery as well as land use contraventions in the area, and we hope that by the time they made their own adjustments and we check it, there would be no need for the bulldozers to return to the area”.
He continues: “,It is a clean up operation in Karu community, we came to do a heavy clean up work, removing illegalities including the encroachment into Karu Community Health Centre, where a portion was converted to business facilities with the location of shops.
“The people of Karu community wrote to the both FCT Ministers, protesting that the development at the Health centre needed to give way, and today, it has given way. So the Health centre can now be expanded for more health services to the community.
“Karu is an Organic settlement, so you must respect them as they are the indigenes, so that’s why have to stop where we have indigenous issues, and allow the community leader and youth leader to adjust the encroachments themselves, so as to have a wider road, and let them know that the Cemetery is not where dirt, as we need to make it to be very clear and clean”.
Reacting to the development,
Chairman, Karu Gbagyi Development Association and Karu Chiefdom Association, Dangana Jimiko said what happened was not a surprise, as the FCTA officials visited and marked the affected structures in the area.
He decried as unpalatable, the commercial activities around the cemetery, which the community agreed should be removed.
According to him: “There was a synergy and agreement with the leader of the FCTA Team, the Chiefs and also other stakeholders within the community, that they will come and remove attachments affecting the road.
“The structures are causing distortions to the movement in the area, and it was also agreed that we will be shown those attachments, so we will remove them, which we did. That is okay by us.
“We have talked to the people that are situated around the business areas in the community, that everybody should move their things because, the structures have to be removed, as we did them in error, but now we want to correct it .
“Karu is an ancient city, so anything that has to do with development we welcome it, but the fact remains that anything that will negatively affect us the indigenes, we will not want to align ourselves with that. We were given listen ears by the government, so we welcome the development, as there was enough engagement and notices served for three months or more.
We have talked to people that are affected that even before now, that this thing is going to happen, because we have been talking and liaising with the government.
“We will make sure that nobody returns to the site by sensitising them not to put batchers and other structures on the road and under the high tension wire. because it does happen, we will see the development control come again, to do what they have to do”.