Living in Abuja: The making of a capital city of gross inequality, rags, riches
Nigeria sits atop the Global Homelessness Rankings with 25 million of her citizens lacking proper housing. Economic instability, insecurity, rapid urbanisation, and lack of affordable housing in urban centres are some of the reasons Abuja is feeling the pang of homelessness with thousands dwelling in the city’s over 6,000 uncompleted buildings. As the standard of living plummets, KINGSLEY JEREMIAH writes that affordable housing is becoming a luxury in the Federal Capital Territory, and the failure to strictly implement the Abuja Masterplan is throwing up fresh town planning challenges.
Middle-aged Aminu Usman, a farmer from Dan Kurmi Village, in Maru Local Council of Zamfara State, was forced to relocate to the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) due to climate issues, which affected his yield, and insecurity, which threatened his life and that of his loved ones.
In the Dawaki area of Abuja where he took up “residence,” he became a commercial motorcyclist. For the entire four years that he has so far spent in Abuja, he sleeps beside the Dawaki Village Mosque, which is 28 kilometers away from the Aso Rock Villa, and the National Assembly, where the future of poor, and homeless people like him is determined by the powers that be.
Usman takes his bath once a week at night, defecates openly wherever he finds cover and relies on street drug hawkers when he is sick. Despite the harsh weather and environmental conditions that he puts up with, he has not visited any medical facility since relocating to Abuja.
On rainy days, Usman and his colleagues squeeze themselves into the mosque and makeshift kiosks used by yam sellers on the streets as he continues his search for a better life for himself, his wife, five children, and his mother, who lost her husband (Usman senior) to terrorism.
According to the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, Nigeria’s desert features now cover 64 per cent of the country’s landmass, due to rising population, overgrazing, and climate change. The United Nations specifically identified Bauchi, Borno, Gombe, Jigawa, Kano, Kebbi, Kaduna, Sokoto, Yobe, Adamawa, and Zamfara as frontline states.
As this situation intensifies, in addition to terrorism and disasters like flooding and rising cases of windstorms, 3.4 million people like Usman have fled their homes, according to the International Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), and these people add to the pool of 24.4 million homeless people, which qualifies Nigeria as home to the highest number of homeless people globally.
At about 11:47 p.m. on June 14, when Usman granted this interview, a handful of other commercial motorcyclists were already perched atop their motorcycles strewn across the street. This is where they call home!
For these people, while the state of poor infrastructure in rural communities has triggered rural-urban drift, many factors including insecurity, inequality, flooding, windstorms, economic crisis, and overpopulation are worsening their plights.
Usman’s daily average earning is N9,000 ($5.41), and after his expenses, he is left with about N5,000 ($3). This brings his monthly earnings to N155,000 ($93.15).
From this N155,000, he remits N124,000 ($74.52), which is 80 per cent to his family (wife and kids) and widowed mother in Zamfara State, after which he is left with just N30,000 ($18.03) for his general monthly upkeep, which is barely enough to feed him.
In a country where the national average Cost of a Healthy Diet (CoHD) as of April 2024 stood at N1,035 ($0.62) per adult, per day, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), Usman is not eating well, hence, highly susceptible to ill health.
With Abuja remaining one of the fastest-growing cities in Africa in terms of population and wealth, with a seven per cent yearly population increase, the cost of a single room in the Dawaki area of the city now stands at about N650,000 ($390).
Usman, therefore, would need to save up for about two years without eating to be able to afford the rent since what he earns cannot even guarantee a healthy meal.
Like Usman, Owobo Adenike, who got married about 15 years ago, hoped that relocating to Abuja would bring better opportunities for her husband, an automobile mechanic, who was residing in Kabba, Kogi State. However, the city’s rising living costs have made their situation increasingly challenging. Worst still, the inflation rate in the country has surged from 12 percent in 2009 when they got married, to 34.2 per cent in June 2024.
Within this period, the marriage has produced four children, and the burden of school fees has been added to the load that Adenike and her husband must shoulder. In 2017 after they exhausted their savings on school fees, they were handed a quit notice by their landlord.
With homelessness staring them in the face, they moved into a makeshift house that served as a mechanic workshop by day, and their shelter by night. Reflecting on their predicament, Adenike stressed: “We wouldn’t be able to send our children to school if we didn’t take this approach.”
Their story highlights the growing struggles of many families in Abuja as they grapple with economic pressures exacerbated by rising costs of living. At the height of her frustration, she said: “I contemplated leaving my marriage but for my children.”
Adenike’s predicament is worsening as the family now struggles to feed due to the high cost of food items, which makes it a serious battle to pay her children’s school fees.
While the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reports that 18.3 million children are out of school in Nigeria, Adenike fears her children could soon join that infamous number.
Early in the year, a report by Stativerse listed Nigeria as the numero uno country with the highest amount of homeless people in the world for 2024. According to the report, 25 million Nigerians lack proper housing, and this has been aggravated by certain factors prominent among them, which are economic instability, insecurity, poverty, rapid urbanisation, and conflict.
Also adding to the growing number of homeless people is an insurgency in the core North, herder-farmer clashes in the Middle Belt, and the stark absence of affordable housing in urban centres.
Completing the top three positions on the Global Homelessness Rankings is India in second place with 18 million homeless people, and Mexico in third with 14 million.
Homelessness may be a global challenge that spans continents affecting millions, but at the heart of the brewing homelessness crisis in Abuja, is the lack of affordable housing, which has forced thousands to take up residence in uncompleted buildings that are replete in the country’s capital.
With about 12 per cent of the country’s population being homeless, the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) not long ago confirmed that the more than 6,000 uncompleted buildings in the area serve as make-shift residences for a high number of homeless individuals.
Abuja is emerging capital city of shanties
IN 2023, the Department of Development Control, under the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) started demolishing illegal structures in parts of the capital city.
As a follow-up, in May this year, it issued a 24-hour demolition notice to owners of 500 unauthorised markets and makeshift structures along the Karmo – Dei-Dei Road.
That there are over 500 shanties within a single corridor simply tells a story of how rapidly shanties are cropping up in Abuja. Every part of the city has a shanty to mirror the classical inequality in Nigeria.
Interestingly, as the cost of living soars, most residents in the city centre are relocating to the suburbs where new shanties” are routinely sprouting up and gradually defacing the once serene and beautiful capital city. As they proliferate, they are also providing accommodation for criminal elements.
In backing its threat with action, the FCTA in May, showed up at the News-Engineering area of Dawaki and razed down illegal structures. Before the team arrived at the Panteka side of Dawaki, which borders Labobo Hotel on Panaf Drive, Gafir Isah and others within the shanties had already pulled down their structures, and neatly arranged their materials around the area.
When the enforcement officers finally appeared there, they barely saw any structure to dismantle. But after they left, Isah and the other people started rebuilding their structure, and the people trickled back to business in a matter of hours.
Elsewhere, Alidu, a vulcaniser along the Chibok Road, and other roadside business owners, who had kiosks along the road simply moved them for a brief period and later regrouped shortly after the demolition team departed the area.
Some residents of Unguwan Yan Lambu in the Wuse Zone 3 area of Abuja have lived there for 27 years. This predominantly dry-season farming community gradually became a haven for many displaced by insecurity and climate change-associated catastrophes.
But on May 9, 2024, bulldozers sacked their community, displacing about 1,000 people who sought refuge there after escaping from the snares of terrorists and herders.
The Coordinator of the Department of Development Control in the FCT, Felix Obuah, explained that the administration was poised to rid the territory of shanties and in the process chase away criminals that had taken over that corridor, and also to restore Abuja’s beauty.
“We can’t allow this again. We aim to beautify the city and make Abuja a city that we will all be proud of,” he said. Having been displaced from their ancestral homesteads by factors including banditry and natural disasters, the chairman of the sacked community, Mohammed Musa, is appealing to the government that the displaced occupants need aid to move on in life.
This is not the first time that the government will be clearing shanties in Abuja. Every time there is a new administration the Department of Development Control wakes up to its duties.
Between January and October last year, the FCTA demolished 11,705 shanty colonies across Abuja city. In 2021, it demolished about 2,000 illegal structures in a single enforcement around the Mpape area of the city of Abuja.
More people finding ‘shelter’ in vehicles
AT about 11:28 p.m. on an evening in June, many vehicles lined up along Wole Soyinka Avenue, in the Gwarimpa area of Abuja, close to Setraco with their trunks open, and mosquito nets dropping down. A good number of these vehicles are 1991-generation of Volkswagen Golf cars used commercially for intra-city and inter-state transport.
Omale Ogah, a commercial driver who rented a one-room apartment around the Trade More Estate in the Lugbe area of Abuja, simply turned his car into a home after the area was hit by flooding last year. He has since relocated his family to his village in Kogi State.
“I can’t afford a new place in Abuja. Since I don’t pay rent in the village, I will focus on taking care of my family with my earnings,” Ogah said. By adopting this lifestyle over a year ago, Ogah believes he can limit his bills and find a way to cope with rising inflation in the country.
He visits his family twice a month and replenishes his stock of clothing. While the clothes are kept in a compartment in his car, Ogah feeds, bathes, and defecates in found spaces, especially on the streets.
Lavish estates everywhere, but the poor have no place
DRIVING through Abuja from the Phase Three Junction of Kubwa, one is greeted by a series of massive estates. Turning right, the sight of beautiful housing developments like Efab Metropolis, Mab Global, Gwarimpa, Brain and Hammers, and Fynstone are simply striking. Further up at the Dutse Junction, and down through Dawaki, Jahi, Ketamte extension, to the expansive estates in Lugbe, Guzape, and the impressive edifices in Maitama and Asokoro, the opulence is unmistakable.
As one wonders where the money for these magnificent houses comes from, the answer is boldly inscribed on the walls of some of these buildings. On some of them, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) claims that they are proceeds of money laundering and corruption.
In sum, this illustrates how deep corruption and inequality have penetrated the country. There are plenty of houses, yet the poor have nowhere to live. A simple Google search reveals staggering recoveries made by the EFCC. On May 19 this year, the agency returned 14 properties to the Enugu State government, and 324 houses to the Kano State pensioners. From one former minister alone, Diezani Alison-Madueke, the EFCC recovered $153 million and 80 houses.
Under the former EFCC Chairman, Ibrahim Magu, 836 properties were recovered, according to the Presidential Committee on Audit of Recovered Assets (PCARA). In 2017, 222 houses were recovered from a pension probe, and the Senate reported that 38 houses were allegedly traced to a former Chairman of the Nigerian Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITF), Ngozi Olojeme.
While public servants loot the treasury, the average Nigerian sinks deeper into poverty. The 2022 Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) Survey, published by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) alongside the National Social Safety-Nets Coordinating Office (NASSCO), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), showed that 63 percent of Nigerians (133 million people) are multi-dimensionally poor.
25 million homeless people versus 28 million housing deficits
NIGERIA faces a significant data issue in the housing sector, which the NBS along with the Real Estate Developers Association of Nigeria (REDAN), are working to correct.
Multiple sources, corroborated by the Co-Founder of Dukiya Limited, Bayo Lawal, indicate that Nigeria’s housing deficit was 7 million in 1991 and has risen steadily to 28 million units in 2023.
According to Vice President, Kashim Shettima, N21 trillion ($12.6 billion) would be required to effectively bridge this gap. During the eight years of Buhari’s administration, the National Social Housing Scheme completed more than 13,000 homes across nine states, with plans for 20,000 more. Even if all planned houses are completed, it translates to 21,625 units built yearly.
At this rate, it would take Nigeria approximately 1, 296 years to meet the current housing deficit. In 2024, President Bola Tinubu approved N126.5 billion ($76 million) for the delivery of a total of 100,000 houses nationwide in 18 months. Nigeria would need to spend N1 trillion ($600 million) yearly to close the gap in 21 years.
While tonnes of money are poured into grossly ineffective social welfare schemes, corruption has ensured that the people get little or no benefits while the bulk of these monies end up in private pockets.
For instance, after less than a year of the Tinubu administration, the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, Betta Edu, was suspended from office and is being investigated for diverting N585 million ($352,000) of public funds into a personal bank account and misappropriating another N3 billion from the National Social Investment Programme Agency (NSIPA).
Thus far, the EFCC has recovered approximately N39.8 billion ($1.8 million) out of N44.8 billion ($26.9 million) allegedly embezzled by Halima Shehu, the former National Coordinator of NSIPA.
Additionally, Edu’s ministry awarded a N438 million ($263,228) contract to review the social register, raising concerns about alleged ties to another cabinet member, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo. Edu’s predecessor, Sadiya Farouq, is also being questioned over a N37.1 billion ($22.2 million) fraud involving a contractor, James Okwete, an associate who benefited from numerous contracts during her tenure.
The homeless crisis and related issues are a key part of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) which countries like Nigeria are committed to overcoming by 2030. Without a holistic approach that reduces corruption, tames inequality, honour pledges for adaptation and mitigation, and addresses climate issues, taking off poor citizens from the streets would remain elusive. This move is critical to addressing the rising crime rate and the social unrest that is already being witnessed.
With Abuja Masterplan ‘abandoned,’ end not in sight for shanty proliferation
A recent report put the housing deficit in Abuja at 600,000 as the city accounts for 10 per cent of Nigeria’s overall housing shortage. Abuja’s current travails with shanty settlements can be traced to the failure to implement the original Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Master Plan, according to Abuja-based infrastructure and development expert, Joe Tsavsar. He pointed out that this failure began during the military era when the FCT’s development was mismanaged.
“The initial masterplan, which outlined a phased development approach, was abandoned during the military regime after which the then FCT minister appointed unqualified area council chairmen; neglected the masterplan, and concentrated development only in Phase 1. This deviation distorted the masterplan and led to the emergence of the shanties that we see today,” Tsavsar explained.
He further highlighted that if the phased development had been followed, Abuja would now be in Phase 3, with adequate infrastructure in place to support the planned population. This would have allowed the area councils to develop, providing affordable housing for low-income residents and reducing pressure on the city’s centre.
“The failure to develop the area councils allowed civil servants to exploit the situation, converting their properties for various uses and artificially inflating values. The combination of military-era incompetence and the greed of civil servants is what has led to the current situation,” Tsavsar added.
Tsavsar believes the solution to the menace lies in developing infrastructure across all phases and area councils as originally planned. This would naturally balance population distribution and reduce demand for properties in the city centre.
However, he is skeptical about this happening due to the vested interests of politicians and civil servants who own much of the valuable real estate in Abuja.
“There is no political leadership that is willing to address this issue. Until we have leaders that are willing to sacrifice for the country, much like Jesus did for mankind, this nation will not progress,” Tsavsar concluded.
A registered Quantity Surveyor practicing in Abuja, Eneojo Salami noted that demolitions by FCT authorities have caused increased homelessness, leading many to resort to crime and survival tactics.
According to him, this issue is exacerbated by the migration of individuals from neighbouring states, who are facing insecurity or economic difficulties.
With an unending influx of people into, Salami said that Abuja faces a significant housing challenge, adding that to avoid a situation where something akin to Lagos crops up, the government must address the housing deficit, improve housing policies, promote stability, and reduce excessive migration.
He added that shanties disrupt Abuja’s masterplan as they occupy designated development areas, and they often reappear after demolitions due to unused cleared lands.
Salami said that the government should ensure that these areas are used according to their original plans to prevent recurring issues. He expressed worries about the rising number of unhygienic facilities dotting the environment, including uncompleted buildings, saying that they pose serious health risks and contribute to environmental degradation and crime.
These issues can have broader economic impacts and increase the likelihood of disease outbreaks, Salami noted. For the Founder of Luwab Associates, Oluwole Adelabu, the influx of people from rural areas who are seeking better opportunities in the Federal Capital Territory has escalated shanties in Abuja.
Adelabu explained that the allure of perceived opportunities in Abuja has attracted a significant number of people, far exceeding the available resources and infrastructure.
“When we talk about shanties and what causes them, it’s crucial to consider the unique circumstances of each society,” Adelabu stated. He continued: “In Abuja, the influx of people from the hinterlands, driven by the belief that the Federal Capital Territory offers better prospects, has outpaced the city’s capacity to accommodate them.”
Adelabu pointed out that this population surge has led to a situation where the demand for housing far exceeds supply, particularly for affordable accommodation. The cost of renting a decent home in Abuja is often beyond the reach of the average person, forcing many to seek refuge in poorly planned satellite towns and informal settlements.
“These satellite towns have sprung up rapidly, often without proper urban planning or essential services. This lack of planning has contributed to the rise of shanties across Abuja, as people are left with few alternatives,” Adelabu explained.
The urban planning expert emphasised the need for a strategic approach to managing the population growth in Abuja. He also suggested that the government should focus on improving infrastructure and providing affordable housing options in the city’s outskirts to prevent the further spread of shanties.
“The solution to homelessness in Abuja lies in a coordinated effort to develop satellite towns with proper planning, infrastructure, and services. This would not only improve living conditions for the residents but also reduce the strain on the city centre,” Adelabu concluded. He is worried about the rate of uncompleted structures in Abuja as people take advantage of structures to be illegal tenants
“It is all part of survival strategy but the problem here is that a lot of bad elements in the society turned these to their abode to commit serious crimes and therefore disrupt the peace of the society,” Adelabu said.
According to him, addressing the root causes of shanty formation in Abuja requires a comprehensive strategy that balances population growth with sustainable urban development, ensuring that all residents have access to decent living conditions. He noted that the demolition of shanties is good to some extent but could be counterproductive in the long run because people would always find an alternative to the demolished ones.
Adelabu does not, however, see going back to the village as an option for most people, stressing that there is a need for the government to build affordable low-cost housing for people on mortgages to address the housing shortage crisis.
“The government is all about the people, and as such it has the onerous responsibility of ensuring the safety and welfare of the people, the real challenge is how to balance these two issues without allowing one to disrupt the other,” he noted.
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