FCTA, church disagree over school demolition
A combined team of men of the FCT Development Control Department, soldiers and Mobile Police officers Tuesday stormed the premises of the Living Faith Church, Lifecamp and demolished a school under construction.
The team damaged the barricade to the church and blocked the entrance, witnesses said.
The site engineer of the school building project, Taiwo Ogundele, said they were working at the site when they saw armed police and soldiers with officials from development control, forcing their way into the church compound and heading to the ongoing project to demolish it.
He said the military men that came with the officials of the development control blocked people from coming close to them. “Funnily, we have over 3,000 blocks donated by members for building and they used their pay loader machine to destroy the blocks.”
The site engineer alleged there was no prior notice of “stop work” before the demolition exercise, adding that they only heard from one of the development control officials that the church was blocking road and that they had come to open the road.
Pastor Gideon Oyedepo of the church said the documents of the land are intact and approval was given for the commencement of the project.
But when contacted, the Public Relations Officer of the Department of Development Control, Kalu Emetu, said the pastor has been served notices to stop the illegal development in his compound since 2014.
He said the barricade erected by the pastor stops residents from accessing their properties and officers from the development control from doing their job.
“Meanwhile, this is a public road that is supposed to serve everybody within the area and he insisted that he must be using it alone. When our officials got there even in the presence of soldiers, he refused to open the barricade,” Kalu said.
He said the officers forced their way in by removing the barricade, demanding approval papers, which the pastor failed to produce.
“They had earlier served him notices for him to stop the development that was going on in his compound which includes swimming pool and other structures,” he said.
He said if the pastor has the required document, he should present it to the public.