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 three-month 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.
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Society