“God must have loved the common people He made so many of them”
-Abraham Lincoln
First, I
must confess that I am still a stranger in this pampered city; since I am
barely two months old in this capital of chaos and confusion. But all the same,
these two few months have been quite challenging and eye-opening in my sojourn
as a curious journalist.
Honestly,
if not for the current security Wahala
across some of the hitherto hospitable
peaceful states nearby, I probably would
have pack my bag and return to my former city, where transportation, housing and food are still
relatively cheap and affordable to many of us yanfu-yanfu, irrespective of where we work or live. Unlike this mollycoddle city, made up of
corrupt politicians, greedy landlords and their unscrupulous agents, including of course
some unpatriotic civil servants, whose only quest is to make money, build big
houses, ride exotic cars and mercilessly exploit and oppress their fellow
country men and women.
My two
months sojourn in Abuja has shown and taught me that the over propagated and over
pampered city is nothing but a purported beautiful city surrounded by slums and
poverty; A nation’s capital, with
countless beautiful unoccupied estates and uncountable homeless citizens. I am certain that my eyes have not been
deceiving me so far about the city; a glittering metropolitan city from the
outside, but so dirty inside. Thanks in part to the so-called satellite towns,
with their embarrassing roads and ignominious homes; an exposé of the
corruption in our system.
I don’t
know what you think, but I believe it is a disservice to the majority of tax
payers in this city, especially those hard working and dedicated public servants
and other patriotic striving citizens who are forced to live in these shameful
satellite towns to continue to live in these jungles, while the FCTA
administration proposed and submitted a budget of 3…..3 billion naira to renovate
the ECOWAS building, an international edifice.
Charity we have always been told and come to know should begin at
home. One would have thought the present
administration should have wisely pump part of these billions into the
disgraceful slums in Nyanya, Karimo,
Lugbe, Maraba, Gwa-gwa, and the other dehumanized dwelling place of millions of
Nigerians across the city. I mean development with human face, not the present undemocratic,
intimidation and demolition going on across the capital.
Isn’t it
a beautiful nonsense that a city reputed to be one of the fastest growing
cities in the world and the capital of one of the top five rich oil countries
in the globe, is still disgracefully enmeshed with long queue in most of the
filling stations across the capital and the expensive streets virtually taken
over by unemployed hungry fuel hawkers? What should we call a city that has beautiful
metropolitan roads, various five stars hotels and other gigantic government
establishments like Aso Rock, the National Assembly, the CBN, the NNPC towers,
the NCC structure, the NICON and virtually all the foreign embassies, including
some eye-catching individual structures and yet has a poor unarranged transport
system, with dilapidated buses, Kabu-Kabu,
Keke NAPEP, competing the roads fiercely with various posh cars.
A capital city that allows its citizens to be
packaged into long articulated
vehicles like sandiness in this 21st Century by the various
multi-nationals companies milking us dry. Or should we close our reasoning
and applaud a city that has failed to provide mass housing to its ordinary
citizens, but blindly keep erecting expensive estates for its insatiable
elites? A rich city that still could not stop children from hawking pure water,
plantain, guru-guru and groundnuts on
the streets, nor rehabilitate the multiple of beggars and hundreds of helpless almajiris that daily wander across the
capital in search of food and shelter.
Abuja,
the beautiful lighted city at night, but a careful scrutiny would reveal the
darkness ravaging the slums around, ironically, this same slums host a large concentration
of small business in the capital. A nation’s capital with fake life and
expensive lies, where the ordinary Nigerian is not welcome to stay nor encouraged
to own a home. What beauty lies in a city that worship foreigners, but has no
respect for its own citizens? An artificial and illusive setting where the
price of everything usually double or triple its value. Where is the beauty in Abuja or the sense of
belonging if its overzealous officials could ridiculously demolished hundreds of
homes like the one recently witnessed in Kyami and the others across the city? A city with a large concentration of
suffering and smiling citizens, daily antagonized by government officials and
hourly oppressed by their elected representatives.
Anyway,
I am still around, watching and laughing at the drama daily unfolding across
the beautiful Federal Capital of my dear country, with a happy smirk on my
face, convinced that everyone in Abuja, both the big people and the common
people will certainly leave everything behind one day, and return nakedly to
that unknown place, where nobody owns a land.
