Abuja, the federal capital of Nigeria: reflections on city making and urban displacement policy
Keywords:
displacement, compensation, eviction, relocation, city, urbanAbstract
In Nigeria’s search for a new Federal capital city, Abuja was spotted out and selected from among the 33 sites visited by the search team. The said chosen site (Abuja) was then the home of over 316,000 households of Nigerian citizens who had occupied the land since pre-historic times. Immediately following this choice was Nigerian government’s policy statement in 1976 that the local inhabitants were to be completely relocated outside the new Federal Capital Territory of about 8,000 square kilometers. This was aimed at freeing the capital from primordial claims. But soon, there was a change in policy direction as the government felt that the population to be uprooted was too much for it to bear the costs of their movement or relocation. This work using qualitative and quantitative methods of historical inquiry tends to investigate the displacement of the Abuja native population in the course of the city’s development and rapid urbanization. The findings are that the natives were subjected to forced displacements and dislocations. In their displacement, their displacers (FCDA) never gave them opportunity to negotiate their displacement or compensation. As government chose to be pushing them in-land rather than resettle them, some natives have been evicted over three times relocating from one in-land settlement to another leaving them in horror.
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