Whether one sees Abuja, Nigeria’s 30-year-old federal capital, as an urban paradise or a place where survival is a constant struggle depends largely on one’s income bracket.
Set on the dry plateau in the centre of this West African country, Abuja is the Nigerian authorities’ attempt to build a world-class city from scratch, an urban centre far removed from the deafening, refuse-strewn chaos of the commercial capital, Lagos.
Thirty years ago, a team of international urban planners came up with up a four-phase development blueprint for the city that was set to become the new federal capital.
The development plan is still in its early stages but the population of the city — now celebrating its three decades of existence — is well on the way to the three million mark.
Minister in charge of Abuja, Nasir El-Rufai, said things were already “deteriorating” when he took charge about three years ago because people had no regard for the master plan.
Rufai has on many occasions slammed his predecessors, saying they have either not enforced the master plan or have encouraged people to circumvent planning rules.
There were cases, he has complained, in which people illegally put up buildings on sewage lines or along electricity lines or in designated “green” areas.
The headquarters of the 15-nation Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) is one example of a building put up on a site that was not authorised for construction in the master plan, according to newspaper reports.
“We have been addressing the problem and I think our mission statement to sanitise the city has been realised,” Rufai said.
Abuja car licence plates tout the whole federal territory as a “Centre of Unity”, and great care has been taken in symbolising this, with a giant mosque adjacent to a giant cathedral in the city centre.
But low-income earners complain that there is no place for them in the federal capital.
In the process of sanitising the capital territory, the government demolished several thousand illegal structures in Abuja and razed more than a dozen satellite villages that were home to the poor who work in the city.
“Rufai does not want the poor to live in Abuja and that is why he has made us the target of his demolition exercise,” said Bisi Olaniyan, who has been notified that his three-room apartment in Lugbe on the outskirts of the city is to be demolished
“Government policy [that] favours demolition of poor homes and sale of public property to the privileged few is widening the gap between the haves and the have-nots,” said Chinedu Eze, a trader who had both his house and his shop razed.
Eze’s perception that the authorities want to rid Abuja of the poor and create a safe haven for the rich is shared by thousands of Abuja residents.
“That perception is not founded on facts … The Federal Capital Territory [FCT] is for all Nigerians. The challenge is to build a first-class capital city,” FCT spokesperson Amina Saliu told the media.
But the figures speak for themselves. A plot of land in the capital city costs between 10-million to 20-million naira ($78 000 to $157 000) but costs just about 500 000 naira ($3 900) in the satellite villages.
Given that the minimum wage for the average Abuja office worker is slightly more than $50 a month, most residents have no choice but to resort to the satellite villages, legal or not.
Banjo Obaleye, head of a real estate development firm, conceded that at the moment, there is no “effective demand” for most of the houses available in the city.
Even diplomats say that their budgets will often not stretch to a suitably upmarket residence in the city. — AFP