Disquiet as Suleja Barack is demolished

The old military barrack in Suleja, Niger State, was yesterday demolished.

Bulldozers were mobilized, with operatives of various security agencies as guards, to demolish the facility.

The security personnel who raided the area as early as 7am, ordered the residents to vacate, giving them no time to take out their belongings, the residents have alleged.

The residents, comprising families of retired solders and civilian occupiers who were mostly tenants lamented that all they had owned, including foodstuff and dresses, were buried in the wreckage of the demolition.

A number of the residents who said they had resided there for decades, lamented that they did not know where to go and how to start a new life due to lack of money to even evacuate some of what they were left with as their own.

Responding, the information officer of the Suleja Local Government Area, Malam Jibrin Bisallah said the area was built in the 1970s for some military men after the civil war exercise for temporary use, before the completion of a military barrack in Kontagora, also in Niger State.

He said a compensation of N50 million was given to some military men who engaged on building additional houses on the land in the course of the last administration of the state government, and that a threemonth quite notice was equally issued to all the residents at the time, but that the demolition exercise could not be carried out on several occasions due to the resistance by some residents until this time.