A weeklong encounter with Abuja indigenous people

The visit was a scintillating experience.

We drove from lurch green, magnificent city of Abuja towards the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport. The scent was that of wealth and affluence; flashy cars, porch Jeeps, magnificent homes dotted with flowers and big trees; the roads were elegant, almost spotless.

We soon veered off the city centre, through the highway into the adjoining forests. After driving for about fifteen kilometers, the feeling of my own ancestral village began to overwhelm me; I saw children in tattered clothing, women fetching water from the stream, children bathing in a stagnant pool. On the water bank, dots of infants stood naked, some defecating in the open space. Poverty was etched on the faces of residents in these communities. As the car snaked through the communities, young men and women came out of their huts, many looking haggard. The children waved to us, then goats and poorly fed dogs walked through the villages. Eventhough the people in these communities own the land, they are at the receiving end of the stick compared with Abuja.

In Gaku, there is no health centre; in Kahi, the only health centre has only one half-baked health official: No primary schools. One old woman, in her 90s, in a ghostly voice, told me ‘The next primary school to this place is eight kilometers. Our children wait until they are 10 before they start school, so that they would be old enough to walk the distance.’ About 800 indigenous communities in the FCT face the gory challenge of neglect, agony and anguish. Five of us journalists under the aegis of Network of Journalists on Indigenous Issues, (NEJII) visited the communities.

The indigenous peoples in Abuja, the Nigerian Federal Capital have continued to agonise about what they have variously described as the injustice they have suffered at the hands of the Nigerian State. The original inhabitants in the FCT, such as the Gbayi, Ebira, Bassa, Dibo, Nupe, Gwandara, Koro and Gade have also tried to focus the narrative on the broader historic injustices, marginalisation, and exclusion which have been a part of their experiences. Since 1976, they were made to part with their lands to make way for Nigeria’s capital city.

It is now almost half a century. The FCT original inhabitants insist that their human rights have been consistently trampled upon, just as promises made to them have not been fulfilled. One of the promises made by the then Supreme Military Council headed by the Head of State, the late General Murtala Mohammed in 1976, was that following the acquisition of their lands, original inhabitants would be resettled outside the territory at the government’s expense. At Gwagwalada, a community leader said his people have no states and have no opportunity to choose State Governors of State lawmakers. “We are treated like aliens. The worst is that we are not allowed to rule ourselves. The elected representatives here are mostly strangers to our values and culture,’ the Hakimi of this community who does not wish to be name said.

Many FCT original inhabitants have expressed disappointment that those lofty promises have not been fulfilled, just as they have accused the government of unjustly abandoning them to live in penury after the compulsory acquisition of their lands without compensation. FCT original inhabitants have equally agonised over how the government’s failure to fulfil its side of the bargain has left them landlessness, statelessness, and excluded from the commanding heights of decision-making in the country. In the first place, having taken over the lands in the territory without compensation, and with no robust efforts at resettling them, FCT original inhabitants have condemned the government for rendering them economically prostrate.

Inhabitants communities also, education facilities are few and decrepit health facilities, making them susceptible to outbreaks of various preventable diseases.

It is against this background that one should welcome the efforts of Centre for Human Rights and Civil Education, (CHRICED) and the MacArthur Foundation for their support for Abuja Original Inhabitants, AOIs to amplify their voices. Penultimate week, for the first time, the Abuja Heritage Centre was established on some eight plots of land to serve as the resource library for the promotion, documentation and preservation of the civilisations and rights of AOIs. The groups on the government to listen to the cries of FCT Original Inhabitants and ensure their issues are addressed.

It is pertinent to state that despite the over four decades of marginalisation, exclusion and repression suffered by FCT Original Inhabitants, since their ancestral lands were taken over to make way for the Nigerian capital, not many within and outside the shores of Nigeria know about their plight and struggles. And because there is little knowledge and awareness about the injustices suffered by the Original Inhabitants, there is a dearth of initiatives to support them in seeking redress.

Subsequently, the lack of awareness about the plight of FCT Original Inhabitants is also apparent at the continental level, where Nigeria projects itself as a giant. At the regional level, the issue of the injustice done to Original Inhabitants of the FCT has similarly received scant and perfunctory attention. The result is that there have been no broad continental activities to connect the issues confronting the FCT Original Inhabitants to the struggles of other indigenous peoples on the African continent.

The ongoing project of Promoting the Rights of the Original Inhabitants in the FCT seeks to make the issue a subject of international conversation. But the greatest gain is that AOIs have adopted peace This way, the authorities in Nigeria may be influenced to bring any end to the paradox of a people who made enormous sacrifices for the unity of Nigeria, becoming refugees in their ancestral lands.