Gazupe: A people set for a ‘birthright battle’
Gazupe is a district and a suburb of Abuja situated in the heart of the city. Gazupe village is everything squalor as the life of the people shows nothing but abject poverty and total misery. For Mutiya Agbola, a housewife who lives in a self contained mud apartment with her husband and son, “life has […]
Gazupe is a district and a suburb of Abuja situated in the heart of the city. Gazupe village is everything squalor as the life of the people shows nothing but abject poverty and total misery.
For Mutiya Agbola, a housewife who lives in a self contained mud apartment with her husband and son, “life has been very hard for me and my husband, we pay two thousand naira every month for this and house”, no light, no water, we fetch from the steams.
A native of Oyo State, she told our reporter that she has been living in that community for five years and life has not been easy for them. “We have no potable water, no electricity and nothing to live for in this village”.
She complained that “We go to the stream to fetch water. My husband spends more than N200 daily from the ‘mai ruwa’ out of the little salary he gets monthly, because I just gave birth. I can’t be going to the stream every day and I need to bathe my son, cook, drink and wash with the water we buy”.
Malam Usman said, ‘The worrisome part is that Gazupe has no drainage system. The rainfall leaves dirtys.
Aisha Usman from Kaduna State, a single mother of two, said, “I have been living in Gazupe for five years now and I can only afford a room. Sometimes, we struggle to pay the rent of the single room which we are managing. We use public toilet but sometimes we use the bush. We also use I Pass my neighbour generator but we don’t use it again because fuel is very costly. I pray for the day my children will see the light of electricity”.
She also said the environment is dirty, but she has no other place to live.
Grace Enelegu from Abia State lamented that “They want to demolish other people’s houses and leave the Gwari people, where can we go from here?. Government should come to our aid”.
Ibrahim Sani a trader said, “Task force always disturbs our peace. Nigerian government is always wicked to the poor, it is not doing for us what we asked it to do for us, so why start to disturb us when we struggle to survive?” He asked.
Our reporter saw some ladies who hang around drinking joints in skimpy clothes. When one of them was approached, she said, “Since the government has neglected us, we have to fend for our survival by waiting for men to come and patronize us.
The next visit was at the Chief Palace, Shekwomwasa village Head FCT Abuja; Chief Bitrus T. Yakubu, Gazupe District Head, who passionately spoke “They reared our old father in this Guzape. It is a small village that our forefathers gave us. We are not from Nasarawa, Niger, Plateau State, Kogi or Kaduna States. We are from FCT Abuja. The problem of this community is the FCT minister who sold allocation of this village to strangers, while we are still living here. The FCDA did not integrate us in any form. It did not make any alternative provisions for us. We are ready to die for the land that belongs to our forefathers. Unless they resettle and integrate us, we are not moving an inch from our houses. We must fight for our birthright. They should develop our place as they developed other places in FCT. The FCDA usurped our birthright and sold it to others. We are telling the government to resettle us, provide us good life. They have also marked our houses. We have said it cannot happen. We are waiting for the government to come and bulldoze this place. They cannot mark the indigenes houses.
Counsellor representing Gazupe district, Hon. Bala Iyah, also said, “This is my community and we don’t have allocations. The chairman receives the allocations. What we receive is just salary. I cannot use my salary to develop my community. I have consistently made complaints to the AMAC chairman, but there is little I can do. I will continue to push and beg the AMAC chairman to remember us”.