Notorious Durumi monkey village finally demolished as FCTA continues clean up around old Secretariat

Favour Ishember, Abuja

As criminals take shelter in the notorious Monkey village,  and unclench their criminal activities on innocent Residents, the Federal Capital Territory Administration, FCTA, in collaboration with relevant security agencies, on Tuesday completely demolished the village.

Speaking with Journalist at the site, FCT Director of Security Services, Mr Adamu Gwary, lamented the level of criminalities that were being perpetrated by the people living in the village and the proximity of the Federal Secretariat to the village, and noted that the administration will all it takes to ensure the safety of residents and offices alike.

According to him, “We all know the security implications of this type of shanties, where the Monkey village is harbouring criminals and looking at the Calibre of offices, like Federal Secretariat , etc that are here , and you can see the proximity to these shanties and government cannot condone such illegalities and shanties and we have to ensure the government offices, residents,  and other offices here are safe and secured”.

Mukhtar Galadima, Director, Department of Development Control, while fielding questions said the work is the continuation of the city sanitation that was ordered by the Minister of FCT, Malam Muhammad Bello a few months ago.

He lamented the abuse of land use in the area, one of such is the conversion of the road corridor to a market, which according to him is unacceptable by the government and therefore must be removed.

He, therefore, urged all the owners of the land in that area to come and take over their respective properties in order to stop the squatters from coming back.

Senior Special Assistant to FCT Minister on Monitoring, Inspection and Enforcement, Ikharo Attah, said the belief that the Monkey village cannot be removed is very wrong and that is why they have metamorphosed from shanties a few months ago to a full fledge house built with cement and mud, cement blocks.

In the words of Attah:”I think it is just the belief of people that the Monkey village in Area 1 cannot be removed and they have metamorphosed into a full fledge house built with cement and blocks. The land actually belongs to Nigerian Police and whatever they are planning for the future they haven’t started using it so the people moved in and they became so notorious for criminal hideouts and today we all came in here as a team.

“On Monday when we cleaned the other parts, we discovered that people were packing their things into monkey village and we had to move in there and removed it. And the notorious monkey village is now history.

“And FCDA would inform the Nigerian Police to take over their property. The FCDA has legal backing and the Police are keen to take over the property”, he said.

Alex one of the illegal squatters said he has been staying there for three years.

He said, “last year they demolished here and we came back and built a small place. I want to beg the government to give us a small place for less privileged people like us to build”.

Jeremiah said, “I was staying in Durumi, Durumi was removed so I came to this area last year. And I cannot afford to rent an expensive house in town, nor can I go far because of transportation fares, I cannot afford it. Government should help us and give us the plot to stay instead of demolishing our place from time to time”, he pleaded.