City resilience and Abuja neighbouring towns

In other words, building resilience is about making people, communities and systems better prepared to withstand catastrophic events — natural, climate change-driven, and man-made — and able to bounce back more quickly and sometimes even emerge stronger from those shocks and stresses.” It further explains that “building resilience is critical to protecting the poorest and […]

In other words, building resilience is about making people, communities and systems better prepared to withstand catastrophic events — natural, climate change-driven, and man-made — and able to bounce back more quickly and sometimes even emerge stronger from those shocks and stresses.” It further explains that “building resilience is critical to protecting the poorest and most vulnerable among us, those who typically live in the most easily impacted areas and who are least likely to have savings stashed away or insurance to protect them in case of disaster.”
In the context of Abuja and its surrounding regions, the aspects of resilience apply to both individuals and communities. In one aspect, is the ability of the most vulnerable urban poor that is devoid of adequate accommodation and who withstand displacement from the development control activities of the Authority, persevering constant movement, while toiling in the city in order to earn livelihood. These refer to the likes of the victims of the Apo killings. On the other hand, there are the neighbouring towns that withstand the shocks and stresses of absorbing those who could not get accommodated, not only in the Federal Capital City (FCC) of Abuja, but also within the entire Federal Capital Territory (FCT), due to exorbitant cost of housing.
As a growth pole located at the center of Nigeria, Abuja has a centripetal force of attracting people from all nooks and corners of the country due to available employment opportunities, at the same time it possess centrifugal force by way of stringent development measures that made housing and other services to be highly beyond the reach of the majority urban poor. Rather than being absorbed within the FCT most of the poor and vulnerable citizens chose to reside at the neighbouring towns that provides much less hostilities in terms of development guidelines.
Suleja is typical of these neighbouring towns that absorb the shock of accommodating much well beyond its planned capacity, and yet continue to maintain its function of accommodating both the rich and poor, expected to be in Abuja. By the 1963 census figure the town’s population was just 10,100. When the official growth rate of 2.5% is applied it would grow to 15,000 by 1979. However the Enplan Group that produced a masterplan for Suleja in 1979, actually arrived at only 13,795 population. As projected by the Niger State Government using the 1963 census, the town will grow to only 30,284 by 1995 without the influence of the FCT, while the Enplan Group projected 37,795 for the same period. On the other hand with the influence of the FCT while serving as a haphazard residual of Abuja City, its population was projected to be 87,000 by the corresponding period of 1995 by the Enplan Group. However, using the 1991 census figure the projection to 1995 for the town is 136,103. Thus, rather than maintaining 2.5%, which is the national growth rate annually it assumes more than 13%. The annual rate of increases of the various land uses range between 13 to 16%
The population as at 2012 had blossomed to 579,819 while the Urban Area engulfs the whole of the surrounding neighbouring Local Government of Tafa and about 50% of Gurara Local Government in Niger State. All these originally belong to the erstwhile Abuja Local Government prior to the advent of the FCT. A study by the writer in 1998 reveals that only 28% of the residents are born in the town. While the employment bases of up to 53% of the working population are entirely in Abuja. For those whose business bases are in Suleja, majority of their customers are in Abuja rather the town.
The prevailing challenges are that of unplanned and uncontrolled urbanization with the economic dominance of ethnic group from other parts of the country, who are traders and artisans with higher economic powers and allegiance to their ethnic roots, rather than investing to better public services for the residence communities. The adverse impacts are social and economic problems, marginalization of the indigenous population, speculations with skyrocketing prices of land and housing, inefficient urban services and infrastructure urban services and infrastructure with very marginal contribution to the earnings of Suleja. Yet this resilient city continues with its function.