Officials of the Abuja Metropolitan Management Council (AMMC) at the weekend demolished make shift structures used for open, roadside trading and vocational activities at the popular night market and major road corridors, in Lugbe.
Structures affected were mainly make-shift kiosks belonging to food vendors, clothing and building materials traders, as well as roadside mechanics and artisans, whose activities purportedly caused all forms of nuisance and obstructions in the area.
The clearing exercise came barely two months after the AMMC, accompanied by joint security operatives, visited and ransacked the site for allegedly constituting nuisance and mortal danger to residents.
The Coordinator, Umar Shuaibu, said the raid was to rid the city of environmental nuisance emanating from such sites, in furtherance to keeping the country’s capital city clean.
Shuaibu, who led personnel of the Ministerial Joint Taskforce (MJTF), Abuja Environmental Protection Board (AEPB), department of Development Control and almost all the security operatives on the exercise, vowed that the council would continue to do the right things while carrying out its lawful responsibilities.
He also decried the attitude of the affected persons, bent on trading in unapproved and inappropriate places, despite campaigns against the menace, not only defacing the city but causing untold hardship to others.
Shuaibu hinted that security men would be deployed to watch over the cleared areas so that the traders won’t return and added that a mobile court was also available to try defaulters.