Following the criticism in some quarters as a result of the ongoing clearance of illegal shanties and settlement within the nation’s capital by the Minister of FCT, Mr. Nyesom Wike, the Senior Special Assistant to the Minister on public communication and social media, Mr. Lere Olayinka has reiterated that the Minister will not give attention to “professional scammers and hustlers” who are masquerading as activists.
In a statement he issued to journalists in Abuja on Saturday, the Spokesperson said most of the people using social media platforms to speak against the FCT Minister were doing so because he ignored them and is making the “Yahoo Yahoo” antics through which they have sustained themselves to fail.
“The style of these hustlers masquerading as activists has always been the same. They will threaten and blackmail you by making noise in the media or organizing protest against you. They will be the same people that will arrange someone to approach you that the ‘activists’ can be reached and that they can help. The moment you agree, they will come back with bills that you must pay, and once you pay, they move on to another targets, in most cases, public office holders.
“There are some whose area of core competence is to organize press conference for or against, and get paid.
“Unfortunately for this hustler-activists, Wike is not one who plays that kind of game, and that’s the reason they are frustrated,” Olayinka said.
On the issue of grabbing lands, Olayinka challenged those making such allegations to provide evidence of lands owned by anyone that the FCT Minister grabbed.
“People just saw lands that are not occupied and moved there without authorization from anyone. Under the trees, they built houses with planks, covered them with tarpaulin.
“For instance, when the FCT Minister visited the shanty in Wuye, which shared fence with a residential estate and is close to a rail-line, the occupants were honest enough to admit that they had no authority from anyone to live there. They also admitted that previous governments had cleared the shanty 21 times and that the recent one was the 22nd time.
“The occupants’s only request from the FCT Ministry is for them to be relocated to somewhere else, and a meeting was held with their representatives on Tuesday.”
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