50 years of Abuja: The Agony Of Unheard Voices
By Akinwale Kasali
It is now 50 years since Abuja, Nigerian Federal capital was created. The indigenous peoples who own the land, have a different story from the grandeur and fame the city has assumed.
Jaji is 12 Years Old. He would have started his education at three, coming from a family of teachers, sadly, his destiny changed due to the circumstances bedeviling his parents as indigenous people of Abuja.
In Jaji’s community, there are no schools. A thatched shanty made from palm-fronts were as the Kindergarten for children, some of them up to ten or eleven years old. The next primary school to the community is 10 kilometers away. He had to wait this long to endure the stress of trekking that far distance until he was 12.
“Initially, I felt ashamed, when I ought to be in secondary school, but my parents told me that it was not any fault of mine, that we are merely victims of circumstances,” the child from Rubochi, a Gbagyi Community stated.
Jaji’s eyes was cascaded with tears, as he rolled his cheeks with his left hand, saying that his destiny has been cut short. For Mahmud, he started primary school when he was 13. ‘My parents did not want me to trek to school at a tender age. They waited until I was 13,’ he said
This is the plight of children in indigenous communities in Abuja, Nigeria’s Federal Capital which marked her 50th anniversary this February. Most children in these over 800 communities struggle for access to good and quality education. Their dream remains elusive, a nightmare they are yet to overcome.
In recent years, their travails have been compounded with kidnapping and banditry, putting the lives of children and women at risk.
In Wupa, a Traditional Riverside Community where Mrs Wadi Gade, a Gwari Woman resides, she narrated her ordeal, lamenting the spate of kidnapping and banditry bedeviling the Abuja Original Inhabitants, (AOIs). She said some children in the past had been kidnapped on their way to school. Explaining her travails, she said, “I had to withdraw two of my children from primary school. I would not risk their going to school on foot only to be kidnapped.
“The two children now accompany me to the farm with no defined future in sight”, Mrs Gade said.
According to her, “Regrettably, our Children in Abuja are at the receiving end. No access to education, we are defenseless. Why we watch the Federal Capital Territory grow in strength, our communities remain impoverished and excluded from mainstream development”, she stated.
Insecurity and lack of access to education in the communities make several children vulnerable, leading to premature adulthood, as many are forced to engage in child labour due to poverty, impoverishment and the instability affecting most families in the community.
Mrs Gade said the lack of education affects the capacity of young people in Abuja to secure good jobs. She said with the high rate of unemployment across the country, young people from Abuja Indigenous communities stand a very slim chance due to their lack of access to education.
While insecurity and lack of access to education make the future of the AOIs children bleak.
Medical facilities are unavailable leading to high maternal mortality rate.
Experts say over 80 percent of mothers in the communities do not have access to health workers present during childbirth, leading to high maternal mortality rates.
As part of the Network of Journalists on Indigenous Issues, (NEJII), we visited the communities in a week long tour. From Abuja main city, the tarred roads stopped, leading to snaky and bumpy roads akin to rural areas of Nigeria.
One was greeted with malnourished children in the Byazhin Community in Bwari Area Council, who ran around the sandy soil, bathing in the open stream around the communities.
Though the women are hardworking, tilling the soil for planting and harvest, poverty and exhaustion is written on their faces.
Mrs Usman Duje, an indigene from Gwandara in the Karshi Community, which is primarily the settlement of the Gwandara Tribe shared her pains about the neglect been faced by the AOIs.
The widow said the future of her four kids look bleak as there is no fortune in sight.
“My four children don’t have any hope for the future, my three sons do menial jobs, they don’t have access to good education, our land was forcefully taken away which could have been their inheritance, but the Government took it away from us without compensation.’
Of her daughter who is married, she said the future of her two year old child remains unsecured, because what the Mother faced is surely what she will face.
“This is becoming a generational issue, we need help, come to our aid”, Mrs Duje stated.
The Indigenous people of Abuja include; Koro, Ganagana, Gbade, Ebira, Nupe, Gbayi, Bassa, Gwandara, Amwamwa and others. Abuja was created by military fiat in 1976 leading to the movement of the Federal Capital from Lagos to Abuja.
The military did not only take over the land at gun point, where compensation was paid, it was minimal. The exploitation of the homeland of the AOIs gave rise to a sprawling Abuja city state to the decline of their own economic fortunes.
The worries of the AOIs is that as the FCT is developing, while they are denied access to their biological resources and land rights, as their communities have become a shadow of itself, with impoverishment and poverty becoming their lot.
The neglect of the AOIs by the Federal Government of Nigeria, despite the takeover of their ancestral lands for infrastructural projects without adequate compensation, has left the people of the communities in pain, anguish and impoverishment, with the voices of the people silenced which has brought to fore the call for the authorities to make the people enjoy the dividend of democracy and have a sense of belonging. Network of Journalists on Indigenous Issues, [NEJII], Resource Centre for Human and Civic Education, [CHRICED) and MacArthur Foundation have been working tirelessly to advance the demands of AOIs.
Only recently, an Heritage Centre was built in Abuja that serves as Institutional memory for culture, language and civilisation of Abuja indigenous peoples.
No doubt, the various government policies beginning from 1976 have undermined the rights of AOIs who had lived in their ancestral home for thousands of years before the FCT was created in 1976 through a decree.
The Indigenous people are not alone. Various International instruments back their aspirations.
One example is the United Nations Universal Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 2007 and the International Labour Convention, (ILO) 169 mandates state actors to address the fears and aspirations of Indigenous peoples all over the world.
Many advocates are calling on the Federal Government to address the grievances of the AOIs and hearken to their cries, by giving them a listening ear, and making them have a sense of belonging, with their voices been heard.
Martin Oloja of The Guardian Newspaper criticised President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, Nyesom Wike, for their failure in celebrating Abuja’s 50th Anniversary, despite that the other Seven States created on the same day alongside Abuja on February 3, 1976, marked their Golden Jubilee with fanfare.
He argued that this further shows the marginalisation, neglect and exclusion of the AOIs from the ‘Mega City’ plan of Abuja.
Observers think the onus fall on the present administration of President Ahmed Bola Tinubu to change the narrative by giving hope to the AOIs, and rewriting the history of the AOIs and bring hope where there is despair.
