Mpape cleanup: mixed reactions trailed demolition exercise .

as residents call for tight security surveillance over angry criminals

Favour Ishember, Abuja

mixed reactions has continued to traile the on going demolition exercise in Mpape community,while some residents said the exercise had given them an environmental ambience for fresh breath, others are pleading that the exercise should restricted to the roads corridor.

The residents of Mpape community also called for more security surveillance to discourage angry dislodged criminal elements from continuing with their attacks on innocent people.

With over 536 structures gone down in the demolition exercise, residents of Mpape lamented that, since the intensive cleanup exercise which started with focus on structures on road corridors and shanties harbouring the suspected criminals, there has been provocative attacks of snatching of personal belongings of innocent people in the area.

Chairman of the FCT Ministerial Committee on City Sanitation, Ikharo Attah who insisted that the cleanup exercise would be sustained for a long time, also stated that restoring sanity to Mpape was a commitment that the FCT Minister, Malam Muhammad Bello has vowed to.

Attah also explained that some of the structures that were removed far away from the road corridors, were those allegedly harbouring some criminal elements.

Pained by the administration that many residents were affected by the exercise, Attah however, added that government cannot watch illegalities to over run the nation’s capital city.

” what we observed today is the excessive level of criminalities in Mpape is very worrisome, you can see that even today they are still snatching people’s things.

” Several arrests have been made of the criminals. We thought we could just restrict ourselves to along the roads, but we have to move to where the criminals are staying”, he said.

On the arrested suspects, the Commander Combined Task Force, Idowu Azeez disclosed that about four suspected criminals that were arrested with some dangerous weapons were handed over to the Mpape Police divisional headquarters for further investigation.

He also noted that Security will be beefed in the area to forestall further attacks of the residents.