Inside aging structures of Abuja parks, recreational centres

Some of the flagship parks and recreational centres in the federal capacity city are now being taken over by huge marquees tents and events structures, Daily Trust reports. Parks and recreational areas are meant to be places with natural, semi-natural or planted space set aside for recreation or for protection of wildlife or natural habitats […]

Some of the flagship parks and recreational centres in the federal capacity city are now being taken over by huge marquees tents and events structures, Daily Trust reports.

Parks and recreational areas are meant to be places with natural, semi-natural or planted space set aside for recreation or for protection of wildlife or natural habitats but in Abuja, designated parks and recreational centres are gradually being converted to bars and grills joints against the initial idea of the area.

Daily Trust visited some of the major recreational parks in the city and found that apart from the changing structures in these parks existing facilities are gradually fading.  Seats , picnic tables, barbecue grills and other play-time facilities in these parks are fast decaying.

The Abuja Park and Zoo is one of the major recreation centres in the city where people visit to see several wild animals and enjoy a standard picnic with families and friends but most of the facilities in the park have worn out.

At the Maitama Amusement Park, our reporter observed that there are several of fun-time facilities that have packed up due to lack of maintenance. 

The regulators of parts and recreation in the FCT admit that maintenance has not been carried on facilities in these parks but that the situation would soon change.

The FCT Director for Parks and Recreation Architect Ali Ukele said the FCTA is working towards reviving and making the Abuja Park and Zoo a standard park.

He said there are several parks in Abuja which serve various purposes adding that most of the parks operators violate the terms of the parks and facilities meant to be provided for park users are not on ground.  

“Parks are mainly for social services and not purely commercial purpose so that is why most parks are not being provided with facilities meant for it,” he said.

He said the FCT minister has constituted a committee to look at all parks issues and a report based on the matter has been submitted to the minister who is currently working on it.

“On the issue of Abuja Park and Zoo, Julius Berger built and donated it to government, it was supposed to be managed by the presidency under the office of the SGF but the maintenance has not been carried along all these while. So, we in the Department of the Parks and Recreation have put a memo to the minister because the subsequent administration has not followed up on the zoo. The FCTA is working on bringing the park back to life and it will be stocked with more animals and even new structures will be built and the dilapidated structures will be put back in place.

“FCTA really had to revive some of these green areas to suit the Abuja master plan but developing a park is capital intensive because maintenance has to be involved and government alone cannot do that so a kind of public private partnership was introduced and people were brought in to help manage these parks.  But at the end of it all most of them violated the terms of these parks and that is why you see event centres and pepper soup joints in these park but the FCTA is working towards intensive cleaning of these parks to make it standard,” he said.