AGAIN, Abuja as an idea and reality, clocked 48 years yesterday (February 3, 1976 – February 3, 2024) without any fanfare. There should be some plaudit, however, to the management of the Abuja History and Archives Department because they marked the 32nd anniversary of the capital relocation proper (December 12, 1991 – December 12, 2023) in Abuja last December where I delivered a keynote, among other influential speakers and stakeholders in Abuja.
My keynote then included the fact that even the very tolerant Abuja original inhabitants should not be allowed to continue to campaign for Abuja to be made one of the States of the Federation. I have devoted most part of my contextual reporting and writing viewpoints advocating for the human rights of the natives of Abuja.
Specifically, on the same 32nd anniversary celebration last December, I advised the natives in the presence of some of their traditional rulers to desist from campaigning for Abuja to be made their state and indeed the 20th state in the North. I had then warned about the implications of destroying the specific objectives the founding father, the late General Murtala Mohammed stated 48 years ago. The objectives have been codified into the organic law of the land, the 1999 constitution.
Nigeria’s 1999 constitution is quite clear on the fact that ‘Abuja shall be the capital of the Federation…’ The same constitution only provides that some of the institutions of governance should be run as if the Territory were one of the states of the Federation.
There is no ambiguity (in the constitution) that can be manipulated by politicians and stakeholders to make the ‘Capital of the Federation’ one of the states in the same Federation.
Since the Supreme Court gave its verdict on the presidential election petition late last year without any references to two earlier judicial pronouncements on how Abuja’s 25 % should affect the outcome of the presidential election, Abuja’s original inhabitants have been agitating that Abuja should be regarded and run as their state and all state structures should be established including a state Assembly.
What is more remarkable, since then, from the body language and protocol structures being set up, even the current Minister of FCT and former Governor of Rivers State, Nyesom Wike would like to run Abuja as a State (Governor). His brand new vehicular convoy of seven solid and expensive SUVs now reflects regular state paraphernalia of office.
Now to the brass tacks, but for our lack of seriousness about public interest and unsettled national questions, why should we be re-debating the status of a nation’s capital that clocked 48 years yesterday? Why would a section of the country be uncomfortable with movements of some sections of its Central Bank to its former place where their operations are most relevant? What business have politicians with relocation of just an Aviation agency to its right place where the hub of Aviation is located in West Africa? Why do we have to play politics with simple bureaucratic procedures in Nigeria when the rest of the world is competing for places where science and technology determine progress of mankind?
Should we be shamelessly asking who owns Abuja 48 years after its creation? I think we need to bury the hatchet and move on. If we don’t keep quiet about some fundamental questions on the capital of the federation, we the people can ask too why the longest, the broadest and the most strategic Road in Abuja was named after the late Ahmadu Bello who was premier of Northern region?
If we do not allow the dead to bury their dead, we will begin to ask questions too why we have Ahmadu Bello Way on a strategic Road in Lagos Victoria Island because certain senior Musa Yar’Adua and Ribadu were miniters of Lagos Affairs. We will thereafter begin to ask why we don’t have an Obafemi Awolowo Way in Kaduna or Kano. Besides, we will ask why there is no Michael Opara Way in Sokoto or Nnamdi Azikiwe Road in Katsina or Kano state, in the same vein.
Let’s stop ‘politricking’ and face governance that will link us properly to happenings in 21st century.
We are simply too dubious to get even our national and state assemblies to table serious matters of urgent national importance including security and welfare of the very poor people at this perilous time when the cost of living has become basically unbearable. Let’s not ask questions about the status of Abuja that even state actors who live and work there can’t secure at the moment.
For instance, in a groundbreaking work by two scholars, (Adamu and Afaha) there is a verifiable fact that: More than any other community, Suleja, the former Abuja played a very crucial role in the creation and development of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. Apart from conceding about 80 per cent of its land to the creation of the new nation’s capital in 1976, and being the community that played host to the administrators of the Federal Capital Territory( FCT) at its nascent stage, from 1976 to the early 1980s, when offices and housing accommodation were conspicuously absent in the capital city and the territory as a whole, Suleja yet made the biggest sacrifice in 1979, when it relinquished its former name – Abuja (a name she was bearing since its foundation in 1828) to the naming of the new nation’s capital in 1976, and took the name Suleja.
Indeed, one can argue that since the creation of the new nation’s capital, Abuja in 1976, Suleja has been playing the role of an un-official satellite town of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. Similarly, the proximity and accessibility of Suleja to the capital city and the territory at large provided an excellent opportunity to a substantial number of both the middle and low income earners who could not secure accommodation in the capital city to seek and obtain it in Suleja and its environs.
Why can’t people of Niger State where Suleja and Zuma Rock we used to advertise Abuja in the beginning, are located, even claim that they are the most strategic stakeholders in Abuja? Why can’t Keffi in Nasarawa state too stick out their neck as the authentic owner of the land since they are nearer Abuja than Niger, which contributed less than they did to Abuja land mass?
In my “Inside Stuff” piece titled, ‘Significance of Wike As FCT Minister’ here on Sunday August 20, 2023, I had made the point clear that the swashbuckling former Governor of Rivers state was the first senior Minister of the FCT of southern extraction. Let’s examine excerpts from the article:
‘…And so the most precious gift the Generals’ rule donated to the(ir) Federal Republic of the Nigerian Army as General Chris Ali succinctly puts it in his classic on Nigeria, Abuja has been there as “their capital” until this month and last week when President Bola Ahmed Tinubu took two significant steps to restore confidence in the national capital Hurricane Murtala sold to us 47 years ago as a “symbol of our unity”.
And here is the thing, since inception of the administration of the capital, Nyesom Wike would be the very first Minister of the Capital of the Federation from southern part of the country. Before you shout, what of the late Ajose Adeogun (1976-1979, here is the fact file: the late Adeogun (who died on Saturday July 1, 2023 at 96) was widely reported as the first Minister of FCT. He wasn’t. He was actually designated as Minister of Special Duties with additional responsibility to supervise Abuja to from 15B Awolowo Road, Ikoyi, Lagos as there was no structure yet on the 8,000 square kilometre FCT then.
He was operating from a Field Base in Suleja in Niger State, a border town to the FCT. All other Ministers appointed since then from the South – from Mark Okoye 1980-1984) through Professor Ikejiani Clark to Jumoke Richard Akinjide have been Ministers of State. What’s worse, President Muhammadu Buhari who didn’t care a hoot about federal character in all his appointments for eight years desecrated the Territory as his last two ministers of FCT hail from the North (Adamawa and Kogi states). In other words, the first organic Minister of FCT was John Jatau Kadiya (1979-1982).
And so there is a sense in which we can report that President Tinubu has broken a 47 years old jinx. Just as he did the other day when he obeyed a 2018 Court of Appeal’s declarative judgment that an indigene,(original inhabitant) of the Federal Capital Territory should be appointed as a member of the Federal Executive Council (a Minister). The Indigene will be sworn in tomorrow. That was how in a twinkling of an eye, President Tinubu restored confidence of Nigerians including the original inhabitants (of Abuja) in the Capital of the Federation.
We will no longer call it “Their Capital”. It is now “Our Capital”. In the same vein, the Niger Delta people who have been lamenting absence of their people in the mainstream political leadership and bureaucracy of the Capital despite alleged huge allocations from oil resources from Niger Delta spent so far on the capital project, can now relax their agitation for inclusion in the political leadership and bureaucracy of the FCT. Which reinforces the ancient word that only justice can guarantee peace and stability in any system…’
According to a political geography scholar in Iran, Abolfazl Kavandi kateb, ‘Capital or capital city is the municipality exercising primary status in a country usually as its seat of government and the most important center of political organisation and management of space in the country’. The capital is one of the important subjects in political geography. The capital cities are the symbol of the state authority, the factor of creation of unification and national solidarity using their different functions.
Besides cultural, geographic, economic, communicational and in particular political roles, the capital city has an important role and it is population attracting. The population that has grown in Abuja beyond the expectations of its Founding Fathers has so far not reflected the expected national character. And so the arrival of Wike is supposed to begin a damage control mechanism for peace building.
And so as I was saying, as Tinubu has begun restoration of stakeholder confidence in the Capital of the Federation, Abuja Wike too should be bold enough to study the present convoluted political and administrative structure of the Federal Capital Territory. Most of the structures of governance are neither state nor federal.
The FCT Minister should, in this regard, not delay again the establishment of the FCT Civil Service Commission a 2018 law set up as I once reminded us here. He should not listen to politicians who want to ruin the letter and spirit of the law that sets up the capital of this already convoluted Federation because it is our very Nigerian capital!
Oloja is former editor of The Guardian newspaper and his column, Inside Stuff, runs on the back page of the newspaper on Sundays. The column appears on News Point Nigeria newspaper on Mondays.