Imperative for FCT Borderline Community Development Commission

All travellers who keenly observe changes in the surrounding environment will definitely recognise the changes in the traffic conditions upon approaching Abuja City. As soon as one crosses the borderline from the neighbouring state, the traffic congestion automatically ceases, unlike the traffic congestion and utter disorder left behind before crossing. Also, traffic would be free while leaving the city, only to the point of crossing the border to the adjoining states. From there onward, the nightmare of traffic congestion and chaos begins.

These chaotic traffic congestions prevail at Madalla and Zuba before crossing the borderline from Niger State to the FCT, at one end. And when one leaves Nyanya, the last settlement within the FCT and crosses the borderline to Mararraba, the first settlement in Nasarawa State, at the other end.

Although it is the same federal highway, Trunk A-234, which links the FCT with Nasarawa State, the carriageway is 10 lanes within the FCT, developed by the FCDA. Similarly, the width of the A-2 Federal Highway which brings traffic to the FCT at Zuba is less than the 10-lane ONEX receiving traffic at Zuba, which also was constructed by the FCDA.

The FCDA was created as a special agency for the development of the federal capital, and it has achieved the purpose of its creation. In the adjoining states, there is no similar development agency to contain the continuous flow of heavy traffic that emanates from the Federal Capital City. Some of the traffic would terminate at the neighbouring borderline communities. These are Abuja-based workers who are not accommodated within the city due to many challenges. While the other traffic contains those that radiate from Abuja going to many other parts of the country.

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Another major reason for the sudden and glaring transformation from orderliness to disorderliness and vice versa is that Abuja has a standard plan, development and management, contrary to what is obtained in the neighbouring states. It is one thing to have a plan and another to implement, control and ensure enforcement against violations. The capacity of the FCT administration is very far ahead of all the neighbouring states sharing borders with it.

As a result of the problems from the non-coincidence of political boundaries with natural geographic districts, as well as the development problems resulting from access and proximity, the Abuja master plan recommended that Special Joint Planning Areas be established with the states surrounding the FCT.

Beyond all reasonable doubt, the Federal Capital City and the satellite towns within the FCT have already presented a very hostile environment for the accommodation of medium and low-income earners due to exorbitant demand on land transactions.

On the other hand, those satellite towns outside the FCT presented a more viable and affordable environment for the absorption of the medium and low-income earners repulsed from the city. Thus, it was very easy for the FCT demolition victims to only relocate to these peripheral towns outside the FCT but continue to maintain their sources of livelihood within the FCT. Many of them are workers in the public sector.

Despite this burden the adjoining states bear, to date, no arrangement has been made to improve their facilities to an acceptable standard, and also assist them in supporting their populations which are more beneficial to the FCT than the resident community. Facilities are overstretched, with the emergence of ghettos and slums similar if not worse than those left in Lagos.

Meanwhile, the mitigation measures for addressing these environmental consequences have not been attended to as enshrined in the Abuja master plan. The present dimension is even much wider than earlier anticipated. Obviously, the Federal Capital Territory appears rather a liability to the surrounding states of Nasarawa, Kogi and Niger than an asset just as oil exploration is to the environment of the Niger Delta.

A convergence of the FCTA, the adjoining states and all the stakeholders, with the view to fashioning out a workable solution to this pandemonium, is strongly advocated. An independent planning and development commission fashioned in the like of the Niger Delta Development Commission should emerge as a more balanced and acceptable planning framework.

The need, therefore, for the presentation and enactment of a bill in the National Assembly that will give birth to the FCT Borderline Community Development Commission is long overdue.

The bill was initiated at the National Assembly by Hon. Mukhtar Ahmed, representing Gurara, Suleja and Tafa Federal Constituency during the 6th Assembly; subsequently by Senator Smart Adeyemi of Kogi West, and scaled to second reading before the end of the 9th Assembly. It is high time it is resuscitated at the National Assembly.