Lagos State Government has appalled the growing spate of criminality in and around Abattoir, located in Oko-Oba area of the state, and has resolved to demolish over 2,500 illegal structures therein.

To be affected in the exercise, billed to take place early next week, are shanties and containerized shops around abattoir, Oko-Oba, and Fagba, on the Nigerian Railway right of way, all in Agege.

Disclosing this development in a press release made available to Crimepuzzle by the Public Relations Officer (PRO) of the Lagos State Task Force, Adebayo Taofiq, occupants of the illegal structures  have been served with a 7-day removal notice, adding that at the expiration of the warning notice, bulldozers would be rolled out for the exercise.

Also, according to the statement, the state Commissioner of Police (CP), Edgal Imohimi, had directed that defiant hoodlums and occupiers of such shanties arrested after the expiration should be prosecuted, even as he further charged the Agency Chairman to periodically carry out raids on all criminal hideouts and black-spots across the state.

Imohimi, however, noted that state police command would not relent in securing a safe environment for citizens within the state and the country at large.

The statement quoted the Agency’s Chairman, SP Olayinka Egbeyemi, as saying that the development became imperative as the shanties served as a haven for miscreants and hoodlums, where all sorts of crimes were perpetrated with impunity.

Egbeyemi decried the activities of the miscreants who, he said, were in the habit of terrorizing innocent citizens around Agege, by dispossesing them of their valuables such as phones, wallets and jewelleries.

Egbeyemi added that residents of the area could no longer sleep with their two eyes closed and had had to lodge series of complaints about the criminal activities of these miscreants and hoodlums in his office.

He said: “It is quite worrisome seeing miscreants and hoodlums smoking and selling Indian Hemp as if the state is a jungle, where there is no law. Same goes for prostitution. There you see underaged girls neck-dip in prostitution. No, no, no! This has to be curtailed.

The Chairman stressed that the shanties within and around Abattoir, aside from being on the landscape of the Abattoir complex, it harboured miscreants whose unwholesome activities endangered and greatly result to the growing health hazards of the residents.

The Task Force Chairman commended the state governor, Akinwunmi Abode, for his commitment to all round development in the state, particularly on infrastructure.