…Injures Military Officer
The Taskforce of the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) was attacked by suspected hoodlums in Gwarimpa on Thursday, injuring a military officer.
Comrade Ikharo Attah, Chairman, FCT Ministerial Committee on City Sanitation, said the attackers were clearly enraged that the team had returned to enforce urban and regional environmental rules in several illegal markets that had been demolished just a few weeks before.
Our correspondent gathered that the mob on sighting the taskforce team, descended heavily on them with stones, chanting ” kill and go, kill and go “, while throwing stones.
However, when armed security personnel came towards them, shooting tear gas canisters, they were overwhelmed, he added.
Attah intimated that he was returning to the area to put a stop to the illegal activities of the relocated hoodlums, who have ramped up their evil activities since the shanties where they hid were dismantled.
Even an expatriate lady who resides in the region has raised the alarm about the rising number of robberies by hoodlums who regularly scale the outer fence into her estate.
According to him; ” We are already used to attack from hoodlums, it is part of the price we pay cleaning the city. We discovered that the people had returned to the illegal markets, we had earlier on removed, converting the place to umbrella market.
” The Abuja Environmental Protection Board enforcement team who went in first to remove the illegal shanties that were rebuilt were attacked, alongside the military personnel.
” One officer was badly injured, but we are not stopping the operation, we will continue with our routine clean up around the city, Mpape, and Iddo . No place that need clean up is close ended, but open ended.
Similarly , the Secretary, FCTA Command and Control, Peter Olumuji stated that the removal of illegal shanties at 37th Road in the same Gwarimpa, was a response to the distressed calls from legal occupants who complained of incessant security breaches in the area.
He added that intelligence report showed that illegal drug dealers and criminal suspects have infiltrated the slum.
His words; ” This place is behind 37th Road in Gwarimpa, we got information that illegal drug dealers and other criminal elements who operate around Gwarimpa, return to hibernate here in these shanties”, Olumuji noted.
