EVERY time I drive through Abuja these days, I see something that troubles me. Concrete is rising where water should flow. Mansions now sit on land that was meant to stay green. Canals that once carried rainwater away from our streets have been quietly covered up and built over. What used to be the pride of Nigeria, a city designed with care and foresight, is slowly turning into a place that cannot survive its own rainy season.
This is not just my opinion. It is happening in front of everyone. In recent days, floodwater has swallowed roads, submerged cars and forced its way into homes in Maitama, Katampe, Wuse, Gudu and several other parts of the capital. Residents have been stranded in traffic as water rose past their doors. Some have watched helplessly as their vehicles disappeared beneath brown floodwater. This has become a familiar story in Abuja, and it keeps repeating because the causes have not been dealt with.
Abuja was not built by accident. The original master plan set aside green areas, parks, drainage corridors and natural waterways for a reason. These spaces were never meant to be decorative. They were designed to absorb rainwater and give it somewhere to go when the rains fall heavily, which they always will during the wet season. When developers cover a canal to build an estate, or fence off a park to erect a mansion, they are not just breaking planning rules. They are removing the very system that keeps the city dry.
What makes this even harder to accept is who is doing it. Reports have linked some of the affected properties to senators, retired top government officials and other powerful figures. A canal in one district was reportedly covered to create road access to newly built duplexes. A designated green area elsewhere is said to have been quietly allocated for private residential use. These are not desperate people building shacks out of need. They are people with the means and the connections to know exactly what they are doing, and to expect that nobody will stop them.
For a long time, nobody did. Lawmakers have written letters, environmental groups have raised alarms and journalists have documented the encroachment for years, yet the buildings kept rising. Now that the flooding has reached the homes of the well connected, action is finally being promised. The Minister of the Federal Capital Territory has ordered the demolition of structures found sitting on water channels, and says the exercise will not spare anyone regardless of their status. That is a welcome step, but Abuja has heard tough talk before. What the city needs is consistency, not a reaction that fades once the rains stop.
Climate change is real, and rainfall patterns across Nigeria are becoming harder to predict. But blaming the weather alone lets too many people off the hook. Blocked drains, refuse dumped into waterways, roads resurfaced without proper drainage design and buildings placed where water is supposed to flow all made this crisis worse than it needed to be. Nature will always find its path. If we take that path away, the water will simply take ours instead, flowing through our streets, our compounds and our living rooms.
Ordinary residents pay the highest price for decisions made by powerful people. Meanwhile, those who profited from building on protected land often have the resources to absorb the loss or simply walk away and start again elsewhere.
Abuja does not need another emergency response after the next flood. It needs a government willing to protect what remains of its green spaces, and treat drainage infrastructure as a priority rather than an afterthought.
- West is a seasoned journalist and development practitioner with over a decade of experience in media, human rights advocacy, and NGO leadership. Her syndicated column, The Wednesday Lens, is published every Wednesday in News Point Nigeria newspaper. She can be reached at bomawest111@gmail.com.
