Pegi Resettlement Village: Waiting for the promised land

According to one of the residents who identified himself as Adolphus Ezeoke, living in Pegi has been traumatic. In his words: “I came here in 2007. After the demolition at Karmo, we were relocated here by the FCT administration of el-Rufai. We really don’t know what is going on. When we came here initially, we […]

According to one of the residents who identified himself as Adolphus Ezeoke, living in Pegi has been traumatic. In his words: “I came here in 2007. After the demolition at Karmo, we were relocated here by the FCT administration of el-Rufai. We really don’t know what is going on. When we came here initially, we were promised many things by the government, but now we don’t know what is going on. The access road has not been completed. Infact, it is worse off than when we came.

“The same thing goes for electricity; people here are helping themselves through community work so as to make life meaningful.  Initially, we had boreholes but now, none of them are functioning. The minster came about two months ago to inspect the place but we don’t know whether he is going to take us seriously or not,” he said.

Sharing in his lamentations, Emmanuel Jombo, who works as security guard with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), told Sunday Trust that “in order to meet up with my schedules, I had to leave home as early as 6 am. And due to the nature of our job, we close at nine in the night and I get home as late as 12 midnight because getting a public transport to this place is always very difficult.

“I moved in around March this year. When they demolished Idu Karmo, I had to rent a room in Kubwa and when the high rate of rent is becoming unbearable, I had to move here with my family. The problem we are facing here is enormous, there is no road, no light, no schools for our children to attend, no hospitals such that if there is any medical emergency in the night, there would be nothing for us to do. So we are trapped here. We heard that the minister promised to assit us with amenities but we really don’t know how true this is. El-Rufai relocated us to this place after demolition,” he added.

Similarly, Emmanuel Dikko, secretary to the paramount ruler of Pegi and neighboring Buzunkure village,   appealed to the government to “urgently come to our rescue by giving us all these basic amenities so that life here can be very meaningful.”

While complaining about the poor state of access roads to the settlement, Friday Ogeh told this medium that “I moved here in 2006 from Idu when my house was demolished. Now we are here without any access roads and other form of social amenities. And to transport ourselves to the nearest town which is Kuje is another major problem because the transport fare is too expensive. Imagine that I want to buy an item of fifty naira and then I have to take an Okada of N200 to Kuje. It doesn’t really make sense. So the government should really help us to solve these problems.

“If the government could help us with basic amenities, then this place will be a very good place to live. This place is supposed to be a promised land; but the way things are, we are very frustrated. The electricity that we used here was done through self help. We had to task ourselves to buy pole and cables with which we used to connect from the high tension wires. All these are what the government promised to do for us but up till now, we are still expecting.

“Initially, the El-Rufai administration promised to construct a road network that will link this place directly to Apo, but up till now we are yet to see the fulfillment of that promise. Even the Abuja at 30 housing estates which was funded by the World Bank seems to have been abandoned as there has not been any form of activity there for the past several months now.”

But in his reaction, Abdullahi Idris Zuru, the special adviser to the current FCT minster Adamu Aleiro, told Sunday Trust that “the ministry is aware that there are some basic infrastructures that are lacking; but we have directed the FCDA to immediately assess the level of development in the area with a view of providing the basic amenities that are necessary such as water, light road and market. It is not true that work has been abandoned at the Abuja at 30 villages.

“As a matter of fact, the estate will be commissioned early next year, as all the necessary infrastructures are to be put in place to make this happen. To show the level of the minister’s seriousness on the issue, the minister himself visited the site about a month ago to see for himself the level of development there. And I can assure you that all these things that the residents complained about will be put in place before December 2009.