By Ben Adoga
No fewer than 350 structures were Thursday demolished in a densely populated Bassa-Jiwa village, situated near the Nnamdi Azikiwe Int’l Airport, Abuja.

Most of the demolished structures were residential buildings, shanties, batches, and kiosks sitting on the right of way (ROW), under the train bridge, and pedestrian crossing in and around the village, off the Airport road.

Task team Officials of the FCT Administration’s Taskteam on City Sanitation accompanied by a joint team of security personnel stormed and cleared the structures, for allegedly defacing and posing a serious security threat to the airport gateway.

Explaining the exercise, Director, Development Control Department, Mukhtar Galadima said that about 350 structures removed were part of the 500 uncontrolled developments marked for demolition in the area.
On whether adequate notice was given before the exercise, Galadima said: “Before marking the structures, we came for sensitization first, thereafter, we removed them.

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“It is part of our regular exercise to sanitize the city, and in furtherance of the Nnamdi Azikiwe Airport expansion project being awarded by the Federal Executive Council, so we are to clear all these uncontrolled developments before the commencement of the project. They are over five hundred in number, and we have removed close to 350 , and we are coming to continue with the marking and removals.”

Similarly, Ikharo Attah, the Senior Special Assistant on Monitoring Inspection and Enforcement to the FCT Minister, noted that the area has a multiple level of illegality, as underneath the main train bridge connecting the Nnamdi Azikiwe Int’l Airport is full of shanties and the whole community has turned into shanty, and being security threat.

“The whole community is wrongly built, thereby defacing the area, as the community has been expanding extremely. Although, good people are in the community, but the bad ones have easy access to hide and commit havoc.

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“Even the chief and some of the locals agreed that Bassa- Jiwa needed to be cleaned, and did that while respecting some of the previous markings we had in the community for resettlement and compensation of some indigenous persons there, those were not touched, but several others were not spared , as they were removed.

“We will keep coming back here, because the FCT Minister gave us a strong marching order to actually purge all communities along the Bill Clinton Drive Airport connecting Road and several others around the city, to ensure that all shanties are cleared,” he stressed.

Reacting to the development, Dauda Gimba, Chief of Bassa- Jiwa village said “It is for our good. Like the removal of the batchers under the bridge and along the road corridors have open up and brought back sanity to the area.
“Even though the exercise also affected me, as they demolished my structures including that of my secretary, but I still thank God that they came and notified us, and we worked together with them to ensure compliance.”