The Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) on Saturday demolished the UTC Shopping Complex located at Area 10, Garki, Abuja.
The Joint Task Force of the FCTA had stormed the area in the early hours of Saturday, pulled down the structures without allowing shop owners to retrieve their goods, Persecondnews reports.
A sobbing shop owner said they did not receive any notice of the demolition before the FCTA bulldozers came.
“Although we have been instructed to move to the other complex provided which has not been completed and cannot contain the over 480 shops in the now demolished complex.
Another shop owner, Yusuf Adebayo, insisted they were not notified at all, adding that “I’m not aware of that”.
He said that the new shops provided had no amenities such as electricity, despite the fact that about 300 shop owners had already paid about N250,000 each for the shops.
But Mr John Sunday said the FCTA had sent a notice earlier in the year but that the shop owners relaxed since the order asking them to relocate is still in court.
“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,” he said.
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