The Federal Capital Territory Administration demolished the UTC Shopping Complex on Saturday, located at Area 10, in the Garki area of Abuja.
Shopowners said the Joint Task Force of the FCTA stormed the area in the early hours of Saturday, barring them from evacuating valuable items from their shops before the demolition began.
According to them, they hadn’t received any notice of the demolition, although they had been instructed to move to the other complex provided, which, they argued, had not been completed and could not contain the over 480 shops in the now demolished complex.
While the majority say they received no notice of the impending demolition, one John Sunday admits the FCTA had sent a notice earlier in the year but says the shop owners had relaxed since the matter of the ordered move was still being contested in court.
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“Yes, we were given notice earlier this year that they were coming. But the whole matter is still in court, according to what our leaders in the complex told us. So we just had hopes that it was a fifty-fifty situation; we didn’t think it would happen this way. So perhaps the case had been settled in court without us knowing”.
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Another shop owner, Yusuf Adebayo, insisted they were not notified at all, adding that “I’m not aware of that”.
He further said that the new shops provided had not been fitted with amenities such as electricity, despite the fact that about 300 shop owners had already paid about N250,000 each for the shops.
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