By Abdul Jelil Adebayo and Josephine Ella
The Development Control Department of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) said it is not intimidated by the attack launched on its enforcement team recently in Mabushi, warning those occupying illegal structures in the area to vacate before the next visit of the team.
It would be recalled that earlier this year, over a 100 youths of Mabushi, one of the fastest growing slums in the territory, armed with different weapons resisted an attempt by the development control to carry out demolition in the area.
According to the youths who spoke to journalists after the incident, there was no justification for the exercise as they claimed they had neither been compensated nor resettled by the FCT administration.
The angry youths who also claimed that they were not notified before the attempted demolition, had vow that they will never allow the exercise to take place unless the due process is followed and they are duly compensated.
However, the Director of Development Control, Mallam Yahaya Yusuf, in an interview with Peoples Daily, said the department has not given up on the area, warning those occupying the affected houses to vacate.
He, however, explained that the structures the team attempted to remove were illegal structures put up by some of the villages, maintaining that the villagers encroached into plots that do not belong to them.
His words: “In Mabushi, what has been happening is a concerted decision by the indigenes to pounce on an area that all of us have known before now that were not part of the indigenous villages, in the name of sustaining their livelihood.”
Continuing, he said, “when you now have these buildings in tens outside the village, you can’t just keep your eyes open and not address them if not before you know it, they will develop into another slum and this is what we are trying to address and off course people have encountered some challenges at the process but, we are not daunted. We will soon revisit the area as we rotate our normal enforcement exercise.”
The director alluded to some illegal property owners in the area who sponsor the resistance by the youths to protect their properties, saying, however, that since the attack, some of the structures have been removed in the presence of armed police men who later accompanied the team for the exercise.
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