By Ezekiel Dontinna
The Plateau State Environmental Protection and Sanitation Agency (PEPSA), has sealed an illegal park and entire shops housed by Amuzie Plaza along Zaria Terrace in Jos, for flaunting, resisting arrest and attacking the enforcers during sanitation.
This happened when the sanitation team approached the Plaza and arrested some offenders who flaunted the sanitation time, carrying out their normal businesses without any remorse.
While arresting a roadside food vendor, a young man (name withheld) harassed the officers attached to the team and boldly ordered the woman not to follow the team of inspectors saying, “your not going anywhere.
This action forced the security personnel to arrest the young man for disrespecting the Government Order 001. However, as the security were dragging the young man, some groups of people came out and wrestled with the officers causing serious tension around the Plaza.
It, however, took the efforts of combined security personnel mobilised by the Director General of PEPSA, Samuel Dapiya, to arrest the situation.
The Director General Plateau Environmental Protection and Sanitation Agency (PEPSA), thereafter, sealed the entire Amuzie Plaza pending investigation to ascertain the authenticity of their operations as a park.
He said, “for us, as an agency, we intend to, first of all, address the man that challenged and threw stones at the enforcers this morning.
“And also, because of the zero compliance, we want to also look into the authenticity of this, the existence of this particular plaza.
“we are sealing this plaza this morning. We’ve called the GMDB to also look if this particular facility has the government approval to even be here, because you can see how looted and dirty it looks. Look at the water system behind, it’s entirely blocked”, Dapiya emphasized.
Dapiya, however, expressed concern over the attitude of some people noting that, it was not possible for government to do all of these things when most of the waste being generated were by these particular users here.
On her part, the Honourable Deborah Iyam, the Chief Magistrate with the Plateau District Judiciary, one of the magistrates saddled with the responsibility of overseeing the mobile courts, commended the PEPSA for taking this bold step.
“I’m super excited because today is the first sanitation exercise of the year 2025 and for a couple of months, because of some reasons, we’ve not been able to have the monthly sanitation exercise.
“We’ve had the infection rate but we’ve not been enforcing the sanitation exercise, but, today is special because we’ve started off the full enforcement today and we have magistrates in all the mobile courts stationed here to make sure that violators are fine.
“So far we are doing very well. We are at Tafa Balewa road and now we are at Unity Junction where we had a little bit of problem with Amuzie Plaza and we’ve taken measures to see that the plaza is sealed and the violators are accordingly fine”, she reiterated.
However, the State Director of National Orientation Agency (NOA), Mrs Kaneng Tabitha Pam-Hworo, observed that more mobilization and sensitization should be made to continually educate the people on the importance of this exercise.
“This is because people need to know. We have to go to all nooks and crannies to tell the people that our sanitation is ongoing and is going to take place. That is what we want people to know”, she emphasised.
The exercise witnessed the arrest and prosecution of many defaulters by respective Mobile Courts stationed in Jos and Bukuru metropolis.
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