The FCT Ministerial Taskforce on City Sanitation, on Monday, removed over 1,000 illegal squatter settlements in the Karsana- Bunkuro District Road corridor as part of its ongoing effort to restore order and enhance security in the capital city.
Leading the operation, the Director of Development Control, Mukhtar Galadima, who described the clearance as necessary and overdue, said the makeshift shops and squatter huts pulled down stretched up to two kilometers.
He pointed out that the illegally occupied land space was reserved for the proposed Ring Road 3 corridor, noting that several notices had been given to the squatters ahead of the contract award for its construction.
According to him: “This exercise is part of the citywide sanitation to enhance security,” Galadima told reporters at the site, pointing across a stretch of land flanked by new estates.
“So far, we have cleared more than a thousand shacks along a two-kilometre corridor. These are mostly temporary structures, harbouring squatters and people of questionable character.”
Galadima, however, explained that the demolition exercise did not affect indigenous communities as their mud-walled compounds were conspicuously spared in the sanitation exercise.
“We try as much as possible not to interfere with indigenous communities,” Galadima explained, noting that the Department of Resettlement and Compensation has been asked to provide clearer guidance to avoid displacing original settlers.
