“We will even have to develop a strategy that when we remove the illegal structures, we may have to charge the illegal developers to court because they are causing damage to property and life.”
The Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) says it will prosecute developers that violate the Abuja plan by raising illegal structures on waterways and cause damage to lives and property within the nation’s capital.
The Acting Coordinator and Director of Administration and Finance, Abuja Metropolitan Management Council (AMMC), Suleiman Abdurahmeed, disclosed this while speaking with journalists during an assessment tour of the impact of recent flooding within the Federal Capital City (FCC), Abuja.
Abdurahmeed noted that the consistent flooding in some parts of Abuja and it environs has calls for emergency attention from relevant authorities of the Federal Capital Territory Administration.
According to him, the essence of this exercise is to go round and appraise the situation of flood and assess the extent of the damage it has caused by the recent flooding, and also see some remedial measures we can render to arrest the situation.
“The situation is an emergency situation that deserves an emergency attention also. Some of the problems we discovered were that some of the flood plains have been converted to use by illegal developers, and we intend to by Monday, immediately recover those flood plains because if you block the flood plains and you don’t allow water to pass, naturally water will create its own way, and that is what has caused the damage you have seen.
“And the second problem within the city is the drains; we need to distille them because they are blocked, and they are blocked by these expended plastic materials.
“You can see, right now, we are in Area 1, the situation was not the same like the previous day when the whole place was flooded. We have brought machines to drain the water and you can see that the whole place is clear. So we are going to repeat this type of exercise in Jabi, Utako and other parts of the city,” he stressed.
Abdurameed added, “You know that Lokogoma is a humongous problem. We are doing it gradually. We have been removing before but there are other ones we need to remove and you know the rains are here, but we will continue.
“We will even have to develop a strategy that when we remove the illegal structures, we may have to charge the illegal developers to court because they are causing damage to property and life.”