The Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) has vowed to recover all encroached pedestrian walkways in the territory in order to ease human and vehicular movement especially within the city centre.
Consequently, officials of the FCT Department of Development Control visited one of the notorious spots, where a restaurant and bar built on pedestrian walkway beside Sycamore Royals hotel in Durban Street Wuse II, Abuja.
Businessday gathered that operators of the outfits were first served with a removal notice on 8/4/2019 and forty eight hour demolition notice on 29/4/2019 respectively.
Speaking during its weekly site monitoring exercise, Director of the Department, Murktar Galadima bemoaned the alarming rate of incursion into the public infrastructure, which was against the Abuja master plan.
Galadima noted that the Department has 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.
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He cautioned developers to abide by the rules of the building code, so that the hands of the law would not get to them.
“Today being February 2, 2021, 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.
“The essence of the pedestrian walkways is to connect parts of the city easier for pedestrians. So it is important to recover the facilities from any encroachment, because it makes life easier for pedestrians, as it makes walking around the city enjoyable.
“We are extending the exercise all over the city, as we are moving around the city. City management is a continuous process. So from here, maybe next week, we will move to other parts of the city.
“Enforcement exercise is part of legal action 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,” Galadima explained.
The FCTA Develop Control officials also carried out skeletal demolition of contravening structures at a quarrying site along Dusten-alhaji-bwari road.
