Houses on waterways to be demolished in Lugbe FHA estate

Houses built on waterways in the Federal Housing Authority (FHA) Estate, Lugbe, will soon be demolished by government.

Minister of State II, Power, Works and Housing, Suleiman Zarma, stated this while inspecting houses at First Avenue, FHA Lugbe in Abuja.

Zarma said the demolition had become necessary because of gully erosion in the estate, which he attributed to blockage of drainage system.

“A lot of the water channels that I have seen today have been blocked and clearly, there are areas that are liable to flood that people have built on.

“We will look at what the laws are and invoke them because one person or two can’t keep the community hostage; we must save the majority of the people.

“I have also heard a lot of complaints from the residents about the roads around the estate and I have seen them and they are really in a terrible state.

“I also felt the pulse of the residents as we drove along and I want to say that this is the critical failure of planning as the topography was not taken into consideration when this estate was developed and so we have a lot of these failures,’’ he said.

He noted that the facilities that were initially deployed to the estate were either small or not able to contain the volume of water flow in the area. He further noted that the estate has about 60,000 population, making the infrastructure over stretched, saying the initial population was meant to be between 4000 and 5000.

The minister also decried frequent violation of planning regulations of the estate by both residents and managers.

“We have our own part to play as residents and as managers of the estate because I have seen frequent abuse of the planning regulations.

“But as planning authority, we know periodically, we are supposed to look into our settlements, not only the ones we built but also the ones that are inherited by people.

“We have to look at them and do a structure plan and upgrade the facilities for it to be up to the standard of good living for the citizenry of the country,” Zarma added.