The Federal Capital Territory Administration on Tuesday demolished illegal structures and shanties erected on walkways and parking lots at Karu Market.
The News Agency of Nigeria reports that Karu is a major satellite town sitting on major road corridors linking to Orozo and Karshi.
Ikharo Attah, the Senior Special Assistant on Monitoring, Inspection and Enforcement to the FCT Minister, who led the operation, explained that the market was badly “contaminated” with structures built illegally.
Attah said many persons coming from satellite towns like Kurudu, Gidan Daya, Maraban Loko up to Karshi had to go through Karu site because they could not go through the road in front of the Karu Market.
He said: “Because people trade on the road, the market appears to be badly ‘contaminated’ with structures and shanties built on all the walkways and parking lots.
“Therefore, we have to clear the road to actually free the market and the road corridor.
“Anybody that lives in Nyanya, Jikwoi and Karshi axis road will know what this spot means.
“It is a spot that people don’t transverse.
“Many people coming from areas like Orozo, Kpgye, Pyanko up to Karshi pass through a lot of difficulties before they will access the road.”
The Minister’s aide gave assurance that the cleanup of the market would be sustained to prevent people from building illegally in the market.
Attah said that for the past six years, the market had not been sanitised against illegal structures and shanties, adding that it was bastardised for six years.
He said: “That is why we had to come in and we got the blessings of the Sakaruyi of Karu, Emmanuel Yepwi, who insisted that we can’t have the road leading to the palace blocked.
“If the road is blocked, it actually defaces Karu and paint Karu in very bad light and for this big cleanup we did, no one is going to come back here in the next three years.”
Earlier, Nbede Michael, the Divisional Head, Planning, Land and Survey, Abuja Municipal Area Council, commended FCTA for demolishing all the illegal structures and shanties in the market.
Michael said: “One of the major issues here is trading activities, totally blocking the major express road on a daily basis.
“Thank God for the work done by the FCTA.
“It us a work well done, but we are going to put all measures in place to sustain the new outlook of the market.
“We are going to station AMAC Marshalls to checkmate whosoever that is going to put anything on ground in the undesignated places within and around the market.
“Even though we have a private developer, who is already handling the market, we will fence the whole market so that we can together safeguard it.”
NAN reports that the Sakaruyi of Karu in Abuja Municipal Area Council of the FCT, Yepwi, on Sunday decried the increasing rate of illegal structures in his domain.
The traditional leader stated this when Attah paid him a courtesy visit at his palace in Karu, Abuja.
Yepwi appealed to the Federal Capital Territory Ministerial Committee on city sanitation to urgently remove the illegal structures and shanties in his domain.
He said it had been discovered that the illegalities was being perpetrated by some criminal elements, who live in makeshift shanties and other illegal structures in the community.
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