THAT "UNFINISHED" REPORT ON ABUJA

A reporter recently wrote a piece on the BBC website, as well as, I believe on the radio show Focus On Africa about the nation’s capital Abuja. The report can be found here. Certain things caught my attention about it that I found quiet disturbing and rather unbecoming of whatever journalistic expertise the reporter, Alex Preston has. The article titled, “Abuja: Nigeria’s Unfinished Capital Built On “Stolen” Land” raises some questions of his intent and more importantly who he may have been talking to in regard to his report.

          

First, let me state I DO NOT work for the government, so this is not a propaganda response where facts may be hidden. I mean I quite agree with some of what he wrote. Abuja can be charmless and yes it has buildings (depending mostly on the area where one lives) that are left uncompleted, but in presenting this image of the city, he seemed to multiply its “charmlessness”.

          

For starters, the picture used on the website is over 3 years old, if not more. Here's the picture used in Preston's report:

The building in the background is the Silverbird Galleria and has been completed for over two years now. The huts you see in the foreground aren’t of a village, they’re actually shops of the Arts & Crafts Center where goods from traditional fabrics to jewelry are sold and are purposely made to look like that to go in line with the theme of the center. The placing of that old picture with the story of Abuja’s lack of charm and uncompleted buildings makes it look like we started building the city a year or two ago. Here's what the Silverbird Galleria looks like now:

           

If that's not enough, just to further drive the point home, here's a picture of the galleria from the Arts & Crafts Center as it is today:

 

And not like this:

Abuja constantly has to build to accommodate an ever-increasing population, despite the fact that rent is undeniably high, still as we say, “Nobody moves out of Abuja, they only move in”, perhaps not like Lagos, but still. There’s no denying that in the process of expanding the city, certain infrastructures would be left behind, but if Preston had an issue with this he could’ve talked to the F.C.T (Federal Capital Territory) board in charge of the city. Besides, some of those uncompleted buildings belong to private individuals and until the city decides to put a law in place that they must be completed, they will stay part of the landscape, whether they’re charmless or not!

           

Another issue is his mix-up of Abuja’s history, where he claims former President Olusegun Obasanjo “seized” the land when he was a military president. The truth, which perhaps no one told Preston, is that the plan to relocate the nation’s capital from Lagos to Abuja was made by Obasanjo’s predecessor, General Murtala Mohammed who was assassinated before the plans came to fruition. General Obasanjo simply carried out what had already been set in motion and agreed upon, there was no "seizing" by the general! The issue of whether the Gwaris were adequately compensated or not goes on till date and I do not have all the information on that issue.

          

Still with his lack of research, Preston writes, “Abuja is itself a Gwari word”. NO IT ISN’T! It is actually an amalgamation of two words from two different languages. Abuja is named after a prince, Abu being short for the Arabic name Abubakar and “ja”, a Hausa word for “red” or in his case “light-skinned”. Hence, the fair-skinned prince Abubakar became Abu Ja. His brother Suleiman, has a city named after him called Suleja, in the neighbouring Niger State.

          
It would be respectful of the BBC to withdraw Preston’s article from their site or have it edited to reflect more of the truth on ground, if indeed the BBC wishes to uphold its stand on fair and balanced reporting and to Preston, maybe you should stay a week and not just 3 days, the city might grow on you… or not! We do have some charm!