The Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) has demolished a mega store sitting on a one-storey building in Dawaki, Bwari Area Council of the nation’s capital city for allegedly failing structural integrity test.
Our correspondent gathered that FCTA officials who were accompanied by a combined team of security operatives on Monday stormed the area with their bulldozer and pulled down the structure attached to the site of a collapsed uncompleted building.
It was observed that the owner of the store was allowed to evacuate the wares before the building was reduced to rumbles within minutes, without any casualties incurred in the process.
In an interview with newsmen immediately after the demolition exercise, the Director, Development Control Department of the FCTA, Murkta Galadima, said that the exercise carried out site sitting on plot 59 Dawaki Relocation Scheme, was a follow up on the unfortunate building collapse incident, where life was lost in the process.
According to him; “We (Development Control) received a distress calls from residents of the area that this developer had gone back to site, and it’s even selling items within the building, which if we don’t do anything very promptly, another disaster will occur.
“And that will be really unfortunate on our part, that’s why we have to be very proactive, and avert any of such unfortunate incident that my occur”, he said.
Fielding questions from journalists on if the developer and operators of the store were duly notified before the demolition exercise, the Galadima said, “Yes they were fully notified of the exercise, because before the enforcement of today, we followed due process by conducting integrity test on the building, and the result of the test indicated that the structure failed the test .
“As a result of that, in order to forestall any future reoccurrence , we had to move in and remove the standing structure.
Our correspondent gathered from sympathizers that, the owner of the building built the house with materials he bought from ‘Pantaker’ (those that sells used goods) that it’s obvious that the building is not properly built.
However, as the bulldozer of the Development Control was waiting patiently for them to evacuate their wares, many so called helpers seen stealing their goods.
Similarly, scavengers were at the site removing iron rods, roof among others.
