The FCT administration has reiterated its resolve to ensure swift recovery of encroached pedestrian walkways to ease human and vehicular movement, especially in the city.
The Director, Development Control Department, Murktar Galadima, who made the assertion yesterday during its weekly routine site monitoring exercise, expressed disappointment on the level of incursion into public infrastructure.
Galadima said the practice runs contrary to the Abuja master plan. He noted that the department had 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 said residents and developers must abide by the law, the rules of the building code, otherwise the arms of the law will catch them.
According to him, ‘’Today, being February 2, 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.’’
He said the essence of the pedestrian walkways is to connect parts of the city easily for pedestrians, adding that it makes life easier for pedestrians, and it makes walking around the city enjoyable.
He said: ‘’We are extending the exercise all over the city. City management is a continuous process. So, from here, maybe next week, we will move to other parts of the city. Enforcement is part of legal actions 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, the officials also carried out skeletal demolition of illegal structures at a quarry site along Dusten-Alhaji- Bwari road.
