Security Threat: FCTA clears shanties, recovers dangerous weapons, impounds 20 vehicles

The Nigerian Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA), has recovered dangerous weapons from suspected criminals and impounded about twenty vehicles in Wuse Zone 3, Abuja, during clearance operations by the Tasks team.

Men of the FCTA taskforce, led by the Director, Department of Development Control, Tpl.Muktar Galadima brazened the heavy downpour in the early hours of Wednesday, August 6, 2025 and stormed an identified hotspot in the Wuse Zone 3.

Galadima, while speaking with journalists before and after the exercise, said that the area had presented a formidable threat to security due to the increasing number of shanties and other illegal activities.

According to him, the exercise was a result of the FCT Minister’s directive on Tuesday for the multi-sectoral ministerial task force to redouble efforts in ridding the nation’s capital of all criminal elements, including shanties, among others.

He said: “We have been able to identify a location that somehow poses a lot of challenge to the city’s security and then the city’s aesthetic quality, and we have been able to clear the menace and even to chase away people of questionable characters.

“Moreover, this place has been designated for another use. It’s not supposed to accommodate them. They were occupying illegally.

“In the plan of Abuja, where we are standing now, is a proposed road corridor that has been designated as the Inner Northern Expressway, just like what we have as Goodluck-Ebele Jonathan Expressway,” he explained.

Disclosing that there would be a mop-up exercise in the area on Thursday, the Director advised property owners in the area to take advantage of the clean-up and develop their property in line with the directive of the FCT Minister, Barrister Nyesom Wike, that owners of property in the FCT should develop their property or have it revoked.

Director, Department of Security Services, Adamu Gwary, on his part, explained that there was sufficient intelligence report of the place was serving as a hideous for criminals.

Represented by Dr. Peter Olumuji, he displayed some of the dangerous weapons recovered from the area, saying: “If you look at some of these machetes I am holding here, these are the weapons most of these criminal elements who hybernate in this particular axis, normally use to attack unsuspecting passers-by and motoring public.

“From here, they can go towards the National Mosque bridge and they can also access the Zone 1 bridge. So most of those complaints from the public or passers-by of being attacked are done by these miscreants in this area.

“When they attack, they do not only collect their valuables, they also go ahead to machete them with these machetes. Evidences abound in the various police posts around here,” he assured.

On her part, Head of Operations, Directorate of Road Traffic Service (DRTS), popularly known as VIO, Deborah Osho, revealed that about 20 vehicles were impounded.

Osho averred that some of the impounded vehicles were discovered to have been used for “one-chance” operations, adding that the vehicles would be properly documented and their owners made to pay heavy fines before retrieving them.

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