The original inhabitants of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) have linked Tuesday’s poor outing of the Super Eagles against the Ghanaian Black Stars to the ancestral curse placed on the land where the Moshood Abiola Stadium is built.
The Secretary, Garki Chiefdom in the FCT, Lazarus Nyaholo, said this on Wednesday in Abuja at a town hall meeting on Mining Community Development Agreements (MCDAs) and the inauguration of Community Cultural Ambassadors, organised by the Centre for Transparency Advocacy (CTA).
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The Super Eagles were held to a 1-1 draw at the Moshood Abiola Stadium on Tuesday, making the team lose out in the qualification bid for Qatar 2022 World Cup.
Shortly after the match, angry fans, disappointed with the abysmal outing of the team, stormed the pitch destroying some of the facilities on the ground.
The town hall also witnessed the inauguration of cultural ambassadors and tutored participants on how to go about protecting their common heritage sites without breaching the law.
“If they (Eagles) like let them play 10 matches on that pitch, they will never emerge victorious because the original inhabitants that were in that location were chased out unceremoniously without compensation till today and they have laid a curse on that land.
“As long as successive administrations of the FCT feign ignorance to the plight of the people, no football match played there will come out successful until they are appeased by way of compensation,” Nyaholo said.
He lamented that the original inhabitants have been reduced to paupers because they have no elected representatives to project their grievances before constituted authorities.
Nyaholo also said that having no representatives in the Federal Executive Council (FEC) was also marginalizing the original inhabitants of the FCT.
He said, “There is no aspect of human endeavour that the original inhabitants of the FCT are not affected negatively.
“Politically you can see the ratio of our representation in the National Assembly only two House of Representatives member and one Senator against what you have as three in other states and more than five in the case of House of Representatives.”
Speaking earlier, the Executive Director of the Centre for Transparency Advocacy (CTA), Faith Nwadishi, said that the mining sites of the original inhabitants should be protected from encroachment because of their cultural and economic values.
“CTA is one of the organisations promoting the rights of the original inhabitants of the citizens of FCT.
“Under the project, we are promoting the cultural rights of the original inhabitants, especially for them to have development agreements that will protect their cultural rights and ensure that they live responsible mining activities.
“In FCT there are nine tribes. We found out that there were people living here, proper lands were not made for the relocation of these people or for the protection of their cultural, economic and political life.
“We have just come from the constitution amendment. Three requirements for the FCT. We have 36 states including the FCT. But as FEC is constituted, we don’t have an FCT representative at FEC.
“Since the creation of FCT in 1976, we have not had an original inhabitant as FCT minister of the FCT.
“A lot of the cultural sites in the FCT have either been destroyed because of mining or construction,” Nwadishi said.
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