FCT Minister Bala Mohammed
Twenty one years to the day Abuja became the Federal Capital of the nation, the territory remains troubled.
The city from which almost everyone comes to take but not give back what it sorely needs has become a dream scuttled, at least going by the high hopes and expectations it had engendered at the beginning.
Curiously, Abuja, a name taken from the people of Niger State in 1976, has two major birthdays that the political leaders and bureaucrats who built the city hardly celebrate.
The capital of the federation, as a project, clocked 36 years on February 3, 2012 but no one, from the FCT administration to the Presidency remembered.
Then the relocation proper that Gen. Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (IBB) actualised and legalised in the early hours of Thursday December 12, 1991 at the City Gate coined by the first newspaper in Abuja, Abuja Newsday, clocks 21 today.
It is understood that the Alhaji Bala Mohammed administration would like to do anything that was clear at press time as they did modestly last year’s December.
But beyond meretricious celebration, the 36 years old capital is still faced with huge challenges that simplicity of complying with constitutional provisions, notably on the federation capital would have solved.
This, however, is the origin of the major trouble with Abuja as Nigeria’s capital: Around 8.00 a.m. at the Presidential Wing of Lagos Airport on December 12 1991, the then Head of State realised that the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) he was moving into had neither administrative nor political structures to run, even the city’s (municipal) government beyond the then Decree. No. 6 of 1976 (now FCT ACT) which provision was merely about the Federal Capital Development Authority (FCDA) and the powers of the FCT minister and a few provisions about land use and allocation.
And pronto at the airport, the artful Gen. Babangida told journalists that his administration would, on getting to Abuja, promulgate a decree that would define the political and administrative structure of the Territory.
It will be recalled that what the then military president did was that in February 1993, he constituted an 11-man Presidential Committee on the Future Administration of Abuja headed by the then Justice of the Court of Appeal, Justice Mamman Nasir while the Secretary was an FCDA Director, then Alhaji Abdullahi Ganduje (now Dr. Abdullahi Ganduje, Deputy Governor of Kano State). Of the 11-man panel Justices AFD Kuti (Lagos) and Justice Paul Nwokedi (Anambra) from FCT Judicial Division then were the only two members from the South. Abuja Newsday, had then called the panel ‘kangaroo panel on Abuja’ for which the editor then was arrested.
The panel submitted its report in April 1993 but it was never implemented before Babangida ‘stepped aside’ on August 26, 1993. Sadly today, 24 years on, there is no semblance of that law to regulate FCT’s bureaucracy as promised by Babangida who hurriedly left office.
Not even the democracy that has survived for 14 years has brought about the political and administrative structure that Section 303 of the 1999 Constitution as amended provides. for .
An example: Section 303 provides: The Federal Capital Territory, Abuja shall comprise six area councils and the administrative and political structure thereof shall be as provided by an Act of the National Assembly.
This Section represents what General Babangida promised the nation at the Lagos Airport in 1991, which he did not fulfill. And about 14 years into Nigeria’s democracy that has produced three elected Presidents and many FCT Committee Chairmen and members in both Chambers of the National Assembly, there is no such law for the undemocratic structure that FCT has been. It is a paradox of development that the current National Assembly doubles as the legislature for the FCT courtesy of Section 299 (a) of the 1999 Constitution.
Curiously, Section 302 of the Constitution makes the President the Governor of the FCT and the Vice President the Deputy Governor.
But none of them pays attention to substances about the FCT beyond appointing FCT minister(s) that they devolve powers to according to the Constitution, which provides that:
Section 299 (a) provides: references to the Governor, Deputy Governor and the executive council of a state (howsoever called) were references to the President, Vice President and the executive council of the federation (howsoever called) respectively;
Section 302: The President may, in exercise of his powers conferred upon him by section 147 of the Constitution, appoint for the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja a minister who shall exercise such powers and perform such functions as may be delegated to him by the President, from time to time.
The Guardian recalls that during the last presidential campaigns from February to April, 2011, which incidentally ended at the Eagle Square, Abuja, the President and the Vice President did not say a word about Abuja.
Besides, as Nigerians mark the 21st anniversary of the capital relocation to Abuja without fanfare, inquiries also revealed that most of the details in the mission statement of the founding father, Gen. Murtala Muhammed who was assassinated barely 10 days after he proclaimed Abuja as Nigeria’s capital, have not been fulfilled.
One of the strategic details Gen. Muhammed promised the nation was making Lagos, Kaduna, and Port Harcourt, Commercial Capital and Special Areas respectively to reduce pressure on Abuja. His words that his successors have continually ignored:
“…Lagos will, in the foreseeable future, remain the nation’s commercial capital and one of its nerve centres. But in terms of servicing the present infrastructure alone the committed amount of money and effort required will be such that Lagos State will not be ready to cope.
“It will even be unfair to expect the state to bear this heavy burden on its own. It is therefore necessary for the Federal Government to continue to sustain the substantial investment in the area. The port facilities and other economic activities in the Lagos area have to be expanded.
“There is need in the circumstances for the Federal Government to maintain a special defence and security arrangement in Lagos which will henceforth be designated a special area. These arrangements will be carefully worked out and written into the new constitution. Kaduna and Port Harcourt are to be accorded similar status and designated as Special Areas…”
Ironically, only last month at the South West Town-hall meeting on the constitution review process, leaders including former Lagos State governor, Asiwaju Ahmed Tinubu, called for “special status for Lagos. No one remembered in the South-South and the North-West zones what Gen. Murtala’s vision would have accomplished for them. This call resurfaces as Lagos residents have been wondering about why most of the federal roads that pass through Lagos including critical ones that link the ports to the rest of the country are impassable.”
What is more, today, one of the worst spectacles in Lagos is the stretch of road from the International Airport through Ajao Estate and Mafoluku areas.
It is a federal road that Lagos has not been allowed to beautify to cover a national shame. Whenever the heavens open, the areas are water-logged and most of the sideways are unsightly, except for the hotels and banks premises that are well kept.
Another promise Gen. Muhammed’s successors have failed to fulfill is the neutrality of the Federal Capital, which was the blight the opposition then had against Lagos.
They had alleged Lagos was dominated by the Yoruba.
In Abuja today, the original inhabitants who Justice Akinola Aguda recommended should be compensated and resettled elsewhere are the ones complaining about marginalisation.
The FCT Minister, Senator Bala Mohammed disclosed recently that the Federal government required a whopping N145 billion to resettle the original inhabitants in the Territory 36 years on and 21 years after relocation from Lagos.
It is curious that since 1976, there has been no minister of southern extraction for the FCT apart from Ajose Adeogun who was designated Federal Commissioner (Special Duties 1976-1979) and had responsibility to supervise FCT from (Suleja Field Base and 15 Awolowo Road, Ikoyi, Office of FCDA) by the then Murtala/Obasanjo administration.
All other southerners have been Ministers of State. This was up to the last cabinet when Captain Caleb Olubolade was minister of State FCT, for a brief period as he was deployed from Special Duties in the presidency. Throughout the eight years of Chief Obasanjo and three years of Alhaji Umaru Musa Yar’Adua as president, nobody from the South was appointed FCT Minister and for one year that Dr. Goodluck Jonathan was president before he was sworn in, no one from the South was good enough to be FCT Minister. They were good only as ministers of State. It was anticipated that the jinx would be broken when President Jonathan was sworn-in in May 2011 as some candidates from the South were listed as possible successor to Bala Mohammed. But then Senator Bala from Bauchi was retained and Oloye Olajumoke Akinjide from Oyo state, was as usual appointed FCT Minister of state.
Before the last cabinet was constituted, The Guardian was told that specifically, the FCT tagged “Centre of Unity” became a battle ground, which created disunity among the president’s men. We gathered that while some of the president’s “Inner Circle” members are insisting that the FCT plum portfolio this time should go to the South after 35 years of existence then, some top politicians in the North were fiercely fighting that since the portfolio had always been zoned to the North, it should remain so. There were dark hints then that the immediate past minister, Senator Bala Mohammed had been ‘anointed’ by a member of the first family to return to his old portfolio for inscrutable reasons.
Besides, despite the fact that the current FCT Minister hails from North East, Bauchi State, the current Executive Secretary of the FCDA Engr. Adamu Ismaila is from the North East (Adamawa).
One other trouble that seems intractable remains noise from churches and mosques in the Territory that the authorities seem incapable of dealing with. Today in Abuja most residents are already feeling the pains of noise pollution from churches and mosques in the residential areas as the Federal and FCT agencies that deal with such environmental challenges look on as this nuisance goes on with rampaging impunity.
One of the attractions the Aguda Panel advertised to the nation then while marketing the new capital gospel was multi-access possibilities as there would be no room for traffic jam, one of the strong points against Lagos as Nigeria’s capital. But today, Abuja is fast getting into congestion ambush.
A corollary to the myriad of challenges that the Nigeria’s capital has had is absence of democratic structures in the operation of the Territory. In the Territory today, it is only the six Area Councils that have elected leaders. The constitution has already foreclosed gubernatorial election in the area. But the natives had two months ago submitted a memorandum to the constitution review committee on the expediency of reviewing Sections 299-303 of the constitution that will allow the residents to elect their Mayor as it is done in most modern capitals such as London, Washington, Beijing, Berlin, etc. They also called for creation of a Mayoral Council that will wrest legislative authorities on FCT from the National Assembly.
But as an analyst told The Guardian Tuesday night in Lagos in an interview, “the most fitting tribute that the presidency can pay to the memory of the founding fathers of Abuja is to fulfil the Murtala dream of making Lagos, Nigeria’s Commercial Capital and designate Kaduna and Port Harcourt Special Areas.”
What the FCT authorities use today in the absence of an enabling law is a 2004 Presidential Order enacted by the then President Olusegun Obasanjo when the FCT Ministry was scrapped by the administration under Malam Nasir el-Rufai as FCT Minister.
This is the reality 36 years of FCT as a project idea and 21 years after relocation from Lagos.
Source: Guardian
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