We’ll demolish 800 houses, shanties on waterways, drainages – Benue govt

In the state capital, the Benue State Urban Development Board, or BSUDB, plans to tear down more than 800 homes and shantytowns situated on drains and waterways.

The Board’s General Manager, Mr. Mede Ternongo, announced this on Thursday, not long after organising his team to demolish illegal buildings and shantytowns in the state capital. He explained that the action was a component of the current administration’s attempts to control flooding and restore the state capital’s masterplan.

He clarified that the town’s more than forty shanties and illegal buildings were removed during the exercise’s initial phase, which started on Thursday.

Mr. Ternongo who assured that every structure on access road in any part of the town would be pulled down cautioned developers to desist from erecting illegal structures in the town without approval from the board.

He said: “We intend to open the roads, major access routes in the city. We just started with the South Bank area of Makurdi and very soon we will move to North Bank area of the town.

“If you go to North Bank area around the Catholic Church, you will seen containers lying on the fence and it has reduced the road side and defaced the environment.

“Enough notices were served on the affected people because we do not remove or demolish any property without giving notification. This time around, we involved the media. We did radio announcements for two weeks informing the general public about this and told the owners of those shanties to remove them. Therefore the notice has beeen there for more than two months before we embarked on today’s exercise.

“The Governor has graciously provided us with necessary logistics to be able to carry out this exercise, we also get support from the construction firm that is undertaking construction works in the state.

“The Governor has also promised to give us bulldozers and payloaders and operational vehicles to ease our job.”

Continuing, he said: “We have about 800 houses built on water ways that have been earmarked for demolition. Just recently we visited a community around the naval road in Kashio layout and all the buildings that were located around the waterways and drainages were touched and we were able to open up the water channel in that part of the town.

“I have discussed with the Governor on the need to build a GSM village for the mobile phone dealers and I believe after this exercise I will go back to him and see how we can commence the building of the village. We have identified the spot and I have told him and he accepted.”