Date Published: 12/27/09

ABUJA IS BUMPIER THAN SPEED BUMPS By Emmanuel Onwubiko

Heartless and insensitive are the two catchy words that would aptly describe the citizens’ view of political office holders in Nigeria in general and Abuja in particular. Why? You may ask. But you need not wait or reflect for too long to come away with cogent and verifiable reasons why most Nigerians especially those sweating and eking out a living in the harsh economic weather in Nigeria have an unfavourable perception of the large army of political office holders in the executive and legislative arms essentially. My I remind my readers that the members of the judicial arm of government in Nigeria are also seen as reactionaries who have collaborated with their friends in the executive arm to daily defraud the millions of Nigerians of their God-given and constitutionally protected DEMOCRACY DIVIDENDS, no thanks to the many laughable judgements from the nation’s courts that have recently made pronouncement to the effect that some erstwhile state governors who stole their states blind should go home, sin- no- more but keep your loots tightly even when it is glaring that millions of their people are heavily malnourished, impoverished, homeless, unemployed and buffeted by intermittent attacks by organized social criminals in active or passive  partnership with the police operatives that are poorly trained and insufficiently motivated.

The secretary of state of the United States of America Mrs. Hilary Clinton during her 2009 policy address on the state of human rights in the globe had singled out Nigeria under the ailing President Umaru Musa Yar’adua as one country which is endowed with the potentials to lift the ordinary people to their better selves but ironically the political class are unwilling to so do or develop the abundant man power of millions of Nigerians.

Most Nigerians know that the majority of the current and past political office holders are gifted with legendary greediness, voracious propensity for corruption, avarice, and are largely insensitive. Experiences of ordinary Nigerians on the streets of major cities and towns especially Abuja have shown that Nigerians are like political orphans or to put it the way NEXT newspaper aptly captured it, Nigeria is a country of 140 million sheep without a shepherd. What a big irony? But this is the reality on the ground especially in Abuja where most people initially mistook as a city of hope for all or to put it the way Ndubusi Acha had posited in one of his books that ‘’every nation in the World has a centre of HOPE where the management of its people and their affairs is usually reposed....’’ To most residents genuinely eking out a living through legitimate means, a day in Abuja is like a thousand years in hell.

Reason: living in Abuja has become nightmarish to thousands of residents because of the extraordinary and satanic exorbitant cost of living. First, the accommodations available in Abuja metropolis namely Maitama, Asokoro, Wuse two, and Garki have become so expensive that only the strong can afford to stay in town while tens-of-thousands of other Nigerians mostly the civil servants and petty traders, those who depend on daily incomes of less than five hundred naira stay hundreds of kilometres away from the city centre but commute regularly on the few available rickety and makeshift buses to their offices or places of work in the Abuja metropolitan area. The few strong people who muster courage to stay in town even with the extremely humanly unacceptable high cost of residential accommodations are daily bombarded by the hard fact that they are not entitled to any form of public service like the provision of affordable water and electricity power so much so that Abuja has become one big chimney where carbon emissions from the thousands of generators in the various households are polluting the environment. Little wonder then that air borne diseases are on the increase even when the few available government hospitals cannot boast of having the most up- to- date medical facilities in their kitty, thereby leaving the residents with no option but to patronize the few available but expensive private clinics since it is almost unthinkable for them to contemplate visiting Aso Rock Clinic [State House Clinic] [sufficiently equipped for the President and his staff but who would rather go to Saudi Arabia for his medical matters], or the National Hospital which is so expensive but has gained notoriety for being the last port of call before the grave yards, no thanks to the high mortality rate of patients at the National Hospital.

The vicissitudes and harsh economic environment in Abuja for most resident has made life much more bumpier than the horrible speed bumps constructed by the current administration in Abuja headed by Adamu Aliero who apart from being the most incompetent political office holder in Abuja is notorious for abandoning the mandate offered him by his people in Kebbi state when they elected him as Senator in the 2007 election only for him to actively lobby and accept the juicier position of the minister of the Federal capital Territory. These notorious speed bumps built strategically on all township roads and even the high ways leading out of Abuja have come under severe criticism from an unusual quarter- the National Assembly members who are actually the major owners of the good but expensive houses that dot the landmass of Abuja. The Senate has even lampooned the minister for building the speed bumps and rightly alleged that more fatal accidents have been caused by the speed bumps much more than when they were not built. The claim therefore by the minister of Abuja that the speed bumps were built to halt what he calls the phenomenal and unprecedented accident rate in the metropolis is counterproductive and false.

Even before the speed bumps were erected against popular opinion, life in Abuja for most commoners and civil servants was hellish especially during the regime of the immediate past administration which carried out the largest demolition of poor peoples’ houses in the nation’s capital under the false guise of removing illegal structures so much so that even the then Abuja minister, the now fugitive Nassir Ahmed El’Rufai demonized the thousands of poor residents of Abuja by tagging them wrongly as good –for- nothing people who should remain in the primitive confines of their grossly under developed villages and not come to Abuja to constitute high nuisance value to the noveau riche and political opportunists who engage in ostentatious life style to the consternation of the thousands of heavily impoverished Abuja residents who are now living lives bumpier than the ugly speed bumps on Abuja roads. Thomas Hobbes’ description of the state of nature as ‘’short, brutish and terrifying...’’ is appropriate if one must accurately describe how difficult it has become for the commoners to make a living now in Abuja especially with the renewed onslaught on poor street traders daily brutalized by the Adamu Alierro-led notoriously incompetent administration which is even so afraid of the organized civil society that it will not deal with it even with the longest spoon. Political office holders mortally afraid of open government like what is obtainable in Abuja will shun any invitation of organized civil society group to partner with them in conducting transparent opinion polls to gauge the correct perception of that administration by the populace.

Importantly, the Nigerian Constitution equally made it difficult for Abuja residents to openly ventilate their anger on the incompetence of the administration when the drafters made provision to the effect that the National Assembly shall act as the state Assembly or legislature for Abuja. How do you expect the minister of Abuja to be responsive to the yearnings of the actual residents when the National Assembly members primarily elected by their local constituents may not give dedicated service to Abuja residents since they have a place where their democratic hope lies which are their various local constituencies in their states far away from Abuja where they derive their votes? This is the reason fundamentally why Abuja residents do not often demand the democracy dividends defined by Godson Dinneya as ‘’the end-product of citizens’ investible natural rights and is captured by two variables namely, the actual level of liberty enjoyed by citizens, and expectation of future liberties, referred to as DEMOCRATIC HOPE’’.  But our hope as residents lies squarely on our ability to demand good governance irrespective of the fundamental defects in the constitution which categorized Abuja residents as endangered species.

+ Onwubiko heads Human Rights Writers’ Association of Nigeria, and lives in Abuja.