ABUJA TODAY: IS ABUJA NOW THE FEDERAL CATTLE TERRITORY OR FEDERAL CAPITAL TERRITORY?

We have been com­pelled to com­ment twice in the last two months on the deteriorating condition of Abuja, Nigeria’s federal capi­tal territory, which until a few months ago, was undeniably the most beautiful and best organised city on the African continent.


 It is a fact of history that since the new federal capital became truly functional since the Ibrahim Ba­bangida administration effec­tively relocated the administra­tive activities of the nation from the erstwhile capital of Lagos to Abuja, in December 1991. Abuja had become the cynosure of Afri­cans and people from other parts of the world, to the extent that the FCT effectively became the preferred conference city of the continent. Many observers had only compared Abuja with Cape Town in South Africa in beauty and aesthetics. In spite of distortions which the city suffered through the illegal distortions of its masterplan, the city still held its own and totally recovered its beauty and good plan after the yeoman’s job done by the erstwhile minister of the FCT, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, who President Olusegun Obasanjo mandated to restore Abuja to its original master plan and to restore the distortions caused through the activities of some quarters.

Malam El-Rufai went to unusual lengths to restore Abuja to its billing as a capital which re­mained the pride of all Nigerians. The infrastructural develop­ments which different adminis­trations have continued to effect in the nation’s new federal capital had added to its beauty and util­ity. It is therefore ironical that Abu­ja has been visited with an un­precedented deterioration since the inception of the administra­tion of President Muhammadu Buhari, who incidentally is reput­ed as the most disciplined admin­istration to have run Nigeria in a very long while.

 In the last two years, Abuja has fallen into an immense disrepair both in the decay and collapse of its infrastructure and failure of services and amenities. In the last six months, roads and erst­while manicured avenues and streets have become guttered an decrepit even as refuse mounds have become a common feature in different parts of the city.

 A city that used to have well lit streets at night has now been turned into pitch darkness, making move­ment within the town that used to be a thing of joy, a veritable per­ilous affair, both within the city centre and its suburbs. The unlit condition of the city has inevitably given rise to an increase in criminal activities, as the FCT that used to be as safe as the womb, is currently bedevilled with insecurity of different sorts.

 Perhaps, nothing dramatizes the abject neglect to which the FCT has been subjected to more than the fact that Abuja has been taken over by herds of cattle and which roam the territory indis­criminately in a manner that shows a complete disrespect and disregard for the sanctity of the federal capital and all that goes with it. The sight of herds of cattle roaming indiscriminately in the federal capital without any form of official control or sanction leaves behind a gory impression that any form of administration has led many people to start de­risively describing Abuja as the Federal Cattle Territory.

The eyesore in the face of com­plete inaction on the part of the FCT Administration have led many to start wondering when the president would appoint a minister of the FCT, as there is no indication whatsoever that there is one. This disgraceful cattle menace has attracted the attention of the Senate Committee on the Fed­eral Capital which recently sat to consider the sorry situation.

 So aghast was the Committee that they have suggested that any such cows roaming about aimlesslessly deserve to be brought down We  are hugely disappointed at the level of deterioration and disrepair to which our once-hallowed Federal Capital city has been subjected to and we wonder why the FCT Administration has not seen the need to sanitize the city and re­turn it to its former glorious state.

 A nation’s capital is its mascot and so, the glory of the nation is as outstanding as its capital. To that extent, President Buhari should take special interest in the dire condition of the Abuja FCT and appoint those who are able to rise to the responsibility of caring for this shining symbol of our na­tional unity. Authority...