Vows To Sustain Exercise Until Sanity Returns
The Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) has vowed to sustained the removal removal of shanties, batchers, built by scavengers popularly known as ‘baban bola’ in Kubwa Bwari Area Council, Abuja until sanity returns to that area.
The Senior Special Assistant on Monitoring, Inspection, and Enforcement to FCT Minister Comrade Ikharo Attah along side CSP Solomon Adebayo, both lead the Joint Security Team during the enforcement.
He lamented that the team had come to address a security issue in the area near the Kubwa train station, where people are attacked as from 6p.m.
According to Attah “We came here to actually address security problems, we came here with the full support and the directive of the FCT Minister Malam Muhammad Musa Bello and the Commissioner of Police Sunday Babaje to actually tackle the issue of miscreants and babanbola that reck havoc on persons in FCT, this is the connecting area between Kubwa and Biazhin and there is so much cases of report here from this rail corridor and rail station that many person cannot even pass after 6pm, you dare not pass this area after 6pm, many persons have been robbed and stabbed with knife and other dangerous weapons and dispossesses them of their belongings here.
“Machines cannot get to that stretch so we had to set the shanties and batchers on fire.
“From what we gathered some drugs that are being sold around here, were found and were being handled by the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) personnel.
“I can’t really quantify the number of shanties but my desires is to sack the shanties and free this area of all criminal elements .
“The residents were jubilating even though they were scared to show their faces to journalists. They were so happy because most of those boys scale the fence of the estate around here and rob them without being challenged”.
Speaking on the sustainability of the exercise, Attah hinted that: “We are going to come back and we will keep coming and keep coming until they give up on this location.
“We came here last year it was densely populated by batchers and what we see today is about 40% of what we removed last year . If they come again we will be waiting for them. What is important is sustainability and when government keeps doing the job and the Minister and Commissioner of Police has given us the mandate to go after bababola in Abuja. Most of the things we recovered are daggers, attack knives, light weapons etc.
“They even extend their batchers close to the train tracks”.
A resident in the are who doesn’t want his name mentioned for fear of being attacked commended the FCTA for a job well done.
He said, “This is a very strong spot and no man’s land because they take anything that can make them high. They take hard drugs and sell hard drugs.
“Once they take drugs they don’t respect anyone.
“This is very dangerous, we do our business during the day we close before 6pm because of the insecurity around here . We would have apppreciate the government to allow people who are doing genuine business to stay here.
“The way they live here nobody would be happy or be on their side”.
Mark Ulogwu, who was a victim of this miscreants was very happy the shanties were destroyed.
He said, “I have been living here since 1989, I am very happy about the destruction of this shanties. In this town this is the kind of place criminals hide. The FCT need to come back to keep checking the place because am sure once they move out in the next two or three months, they will come back to this place.
“Am sure if they are doing their businesses quietly I don’t think the government would have sacked them, I believe they came based on things that have happened around here, I was personally attacked on this spot and the okada man abandoned me. I was robbed, they collected all my valuables and I was beaten seriously.
“In order to ensure they don’t come back , the administration can put fence like babwire or something to stop them from coming back”.
