Jan 17, 2024
– By reporter with agency reports
The Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) has begun an audit of illegal settlements and shanties across the territory, intending to pull them down, as part of measures to tackle the menace of rising insecurity in the nation’s capital, Abuja.
The Department of Development Control in the FCTA has already directed its field officers to submit a list of shanties and informal settlements for a verification exercise toward executing the measures.
Recently, bandits invaded Garam, a town in Niger State that shares border with Bwari in the Federal Capital Territory FCT.
Residents said the bandits who carried out the attack on Tuesday, killed one person and kidnapped nine others. The attack was the fourth in a series of raids carried out by bandits in the community in less than a month.
Haven for criminal elements
The Director, Department of Development Control, Mukhtar Galadima, said on Wednesday during the demolition of shanties and shops at Durumi 1, .that the goal is to profile shanties and informal settlements that may have become a haven for criminal elements.
According to him, the move is part of the Administration’s broader strategies to enhance security and orderly development within the Federal Capital Territory.
He said; “Looking at the rising insecurity in FCT, we were mandated to clear all shanties and squatter settlements in the Federal Capital Territory. So, this is in line with the directive given by the FCT Administration.
“The exercise is not limited to the city centre. We are going beyond the city centre but we have a line of direction. That is why we are starting from the city centre outwards.
“Looking at the rising insecurity in the Federal Capital Territory, we have been mandated to clear all shanties and illegal settlements.
“Where we are clearing now is the continuation of Moshood Abiola Way, which starts from the International Conference Centre, runs through Area 10, Area 2 down to Durumi going to Games Village. You can see this is a road stretch known as Festival Road then.
“The new strategy is that once we clear the place, we hand over to responsible agencies, if they fail to carry out their responsibilities, then they should be blamed not Development Control nor the taskforce. Like this one now, once we clear it, we are going to write to the News Engineering even if it is a temporary road they should make it available to the public so that these people will not come back again”, he added.
Meanwhile, Secretary, Command and Control, FCTA Department of Security Service, Dr Peter Olumuji said Durumi is another notorious place, famed for upheavals.
He said three people were arrested for being in possession of hard drugs and for obstructing the exercise.
“When people decide to build a road corridor, automatically you know that you cannot have a definite address in which you can track them down. So, that is why we are here. As we are clearing it, we are removing the vices within this environment because most of these boys here, in the nighttime they become something else to those who ply this road and even under Area 1 bridge. This is a holistic clearance we doing to curb crime.
“Most of the places we have carried out operations, we have recorded very low crime rate after the clearance of the place and that is why we are also here. Durumi is a popular place and people will attest to it, and as we are here we have contacted the Divisional Police Officer who has also sent personnel here to beef up what we have from the command and control. The crime rate here definitely will reduce to its barest minimal”.
Speaking on sales of drugs, the secretary said, the Nigerian Drug Law and Enforcement Agency NDLEA and the task team have been going round and have been able to confiscate some substances suspected to be Indian hemp.
Vanguard reported that multiple sources reported that on Monday afternoon, bandits in their numbers invaded the town in more than 40 motorcycles, asking the residents the road to Jere, a community in Kaduna state, lying along the Abuja-Kaduna expressway.
It was in Jere that bandits at the weekend dumped the corpses of some of their victims.
A witness said the bandits, brandishing AK-47s as well as swords and arrows, were partially adorned in military fatigues and masked their faces.
The source said; “On Monday afternoon, bandits numbering more than 100 came into Garam in broad daylight on bikes. The bikes were more than 40 and three bandits were on each bike. They openly displayed AK 47. They also have arrows and swords. Most people ran for dear lives because they were not sure what would happen next.”
Another witness said she saw people running when the bandits came on bikes.
“I saw people running when the bandits arrived. I also peeped from where I was hiding and I saw some of them using scarves to cover their faces, while some used masks. Some of them wore combat trousers”, she said.
It was further gathered that about an hour after the bandits left the town, soldiers from 102 Battalion came and later left.
“The soldiers arrived at 1:45 am, drove round and went back. They came back at 3:45am and left again when the bandits had successfully kidnapped people and left. The residents were just left to face the horror with no help from the military authorities”, she added.
However, on Tuesday night, the bandits were in Garam again, moving from house to house to kidnap people.
Another resident said; “The bandits started attacking around 10:30pm. They started burgling shops, especially the shops where those Hausa boys were sleeping. They later entered a house close to ours, forced the gates open, broke the windows and removed the burglary, but none of the occupants slept at home.
“Since the last attack on January 2, most people have stopped sleeping at home. They come in the morning, and leave at night. But after two weeks of relative peace, some people decided to return, and it was that same day that the bandits struck again.”
Also, a resident whose house was attacked said he was just saved by the grace of God.
“They (bandits) attempted to break into our compound around 12:30am. We did not even know what to do. While they continued hitting the padlock we used to lock the gate, we were motionless and pretended dead. We just kept praying silently because there was no one to help us. The soldiers were nowhere to be found when they were most needed. They later left our gate before going to the Hausa settlement where they kidnapped scores of people.”
It was also gathered that the bandits while unleashing their terror speared no one, especially after making their way into the Hausa community.
The bandits who were said to be speaking Fulfulde were shooting sporadically during the operation.
Another resident said, “In the morning, my neighbours who are Fulani interpreted what the bandits said in Fulfulde to me when they came at night. They bandits said, “we must not allow these animals (kidnapped victims) to escape.
“One Nupe woman, whose husband is a driver, was kidnapped alongside her two children. But because the woman has chronic ulcer and she had been sick for some time now, she was later abandoned by the bandits on the way. They tied the woman and the two children to a tree. It was herders who saw them in the bush that set them free and also alerted the soldiers who brought them back.
