From Ndubuisi Orji, Abuja
The House of Representatives has summoned the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, Mohammed Bello, to appear before it over deteriorating security and infrastructural decay in the capital city.
This followed the adoption of a motion by the Deputy Minority Leader, Toby Okechukwu, on “Urgent need to arrest the fast deterioration of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT)” at plenary, yesterday.
In his motion, Okechukwu expressed concerns over the security situation in Abuja, stating that the capital city had never been so unsafe.
The lawmaker lamented the influx of bandits and other criminals, lack of modern security infrastructures in the city centre and satellite towns and general collapse of infrastructure in the FCT.
He identified the challenges confronting the FCT to include the indiscriminate allocation of lands without a matching infrastructural development and acute lack of infrastructure in the satellite towns.
He also decried the resort by tax-paying citizens to self-help and allocation of lands in green areas in clear breach of the FCT masterplan.
Okechukwu also listed other challenges as: “The worsening poor waste management practice in the FCT, including dearth and poor maintenance of waste treatment plants, despite minister of state, FCT’s claim of N8 billion annual expenditure on waste management in the FCT and the far-reaching consequences of absence of a full compliment of the FCTA’s administrative structures for about two years since the appointment of the FCT minister, including the non-appointment of mandate secretaries, equivalents of commissioners at state level, to form the FCT Executive Council.”
Apparently worried by rising cases of insecurity, FCTA, yesterday, commenced massive demolition of illegal motor parks and shanties in Zuba, a major transit town in Abuja. It said the exercise would continue until it flushed out all criminal elements and restore the “green areas.”
Officials led by Attah Ikharo pulled down structures at the popular Dankogi area on the Zuba-Kaduna expressway.
Ikharo said removing the structures was in line with the directives of the FCT minister.