The Federal Capital Territory Administration, FCTA, in Nigeria has reiterated its resolve to ensure the swift recovery of encroached pedestrian walkways in the Territory, in order to ease human and vehicular movement especially within the city.
Director, Development Control Department, Murktar Galadima, who made the assertion during its routine weekly site monitoring exercise, bemoaned the alarming rate of incursion into public infrastructure, which is against the Abuja master plan.
Galadima noted that the Department has the backing of the provisions of the FCT Act of 1976 as well as the Urban and Regional Planning of 1992 to enforce strict compliance with the Abuja master plan.
He cautioned that people (developers) must abide by the law, they must abide by the rules of the building code, otherwise the hands of the law will get to them.
“Today being 2nd February, we moved round to see some of the places where we have cases of impunity and rascality, where people just like to develop what was not approved for them.
“What we have here (at Wuse II) is a case of someone annexing a pedestrian walkway to be part of his property, so it was marked by our officers sometime in 2019 without action, but now we are taking action to recover the pedestrian walkway.
“The essence of the pedestrian walkways is to make parts of the city easier for pedestrians. So it’s important to recover the facilities from any encroachment, because it makes life easier for pedestrians, as it makes walking around the city enjoyable.
“We are extending the exercise all over the city, as we are moving around the city. City management is a continuous process. So from here, maybe next week, we will move to other parts of the city,” he explained.
Galadima further explained that, “Enforcement exercise is part of legal action against contraventions, because we have the backing of the provisions of the FCT Act of 1976 as well as the Urban and Regional Planning of 1992.
“So these are legal instruments given to us by the law to act, so we are just enforcing those components of the legal status.”
In addition to the removal of structures on pedestrian walkways, the officials also carried out skeletal demolition of contravening structures at a quaring site along Dusten-Alhaji- Bwari road.
Emmanuel Ukoh
