The travails of former Abuja people in Niger State

The left over potion of the erstwhile Abuja Emirate prior to 1976 is what constitutes the present Suleja Emirate in Niger State. The bedrock of the original resettlement policy in the FCT is not independent of the location of the present Emirate outside the FCT. This is due to the fact that the proposal to […]

The left over potion of the erstwhile Abuja Emirate prior to 1976 is what constitutes the present Suleja Emirate in Niger State. The bedrock of the original resettlement policy in the FCT is not independent of the location of the present Emirate outside the FCT. This is due to the fact that the proposal to evacuate the original indigenes to their parent states outside the FCT would not have been possible if there is no left over land outside the FCT that was part of the former Abuja Emirate, where the evacuees can be resettled.
Only one obstacle was mentioned as the reason for the jettisoning of the original resettlement policy, and that was the gross underestimation of the actual people to be resettled and the huge amount to be involved in the actual exercise. However if the resettlement of almost 80% of the population in the FCT were to have been undertaken, the actual land to resettle the people within the meager area of land presently left for the Suleja Emirate in Niger State would have also been discovered to be grossly inadequate. On the other hand, within the FCT we would have been faced with security challenges of an extensive empty land that is un-peopled.
As a predominant agrarian community, access to farm land for its primary activity is among the factors responsible for the choice of remaining in Niger State by the former Abuja Emirate and its left over population, while the majority was captured within the FCT. Unfortunately, the prevailing situation in Niger State proved that just as the Original Abuja people within the FCT are lamenting, so also are their kith and kin outside.
Among the four prominent regions in Niger State, Suleja is the only one without a single tertiary institution since the state’s creation in 1975, while the others have multiple. The momentous educational backwardness necessitated the people of the Emirate to struggle for the handing over of the erstwhile FCDA Field Base, as earlier promised to the community. Afterwards, it surrendered the whole land and structures to the Niger State owned IBB University to establish a campus for the benefit of the indigenes. For more than five years Niger State Government refused to allocate funds for the take-off of the campus. But Governor Babangida Aliyu is recently contemplating handing over the structures the community struggled to retrieve from the federal government for a private university which the poor cannot afford. Even the proposal to have a school of nursing at the location of the FCT School of Nursing at the Field Base, prior to the school’s relocation to Gwagwalada in the FCT remains a mere publicity stunt.
The most economically viable land in the state is in the Suleja Emirate due to its proximity to the nation’s capital. This opportunity needs to be capitalized upon for the benefit of the state and ensure the provision of infrastructure for the local community, at least for its tremendous sacrifice. However whatever was proposed remains a fantasy. This include a so-called Twin City project and an international market, from an earlier floated bond by Gov. Aliyu’s government, which fund is gone without a single structure on ground. Blatantly, the project reappeared recently in another floated billions of naira bond. In the 2014 budget, while all sections of the state benefit from development projects, Suleja is tied to an imaginary contribution from the FCT, as if Suleja Emirate is not in Niger State.
Whatever road construction is now going on in the town is the effort of the National Assembly Representative through the constituency fund. For the past seven years of the present regime, in which the governor is from the same senatorial zone, ordinary three-kilometer road could not be completed in Suleja out of the 10-kilometer roads he promised each of the local government areas in the state. Yet, with such a score card, the Talba wants to ride on the back of Suleja people to commence his political relevance in the senate when he vacates office in 2015. They are waiting. Is this situation not encouraging to the birth of a similar pressure group akin to the OIDA?