I. Abumere of the University of Ibadan were engaged to undertake demographic and ecological
surveys to ascertain the exact number of people to be resettled outside the territory, and determine
appropriate compensation. However, this policy of total evacuation was shelved, largely because the
estimated N300 million compensation was deemed unaffordable. General T Y Danjuma, then in
overall charge of the new capital project, recommended that only original inhabitants living within
the city footprint – the 250 square kilometres containing phases one to four of the Federal Capital
City- would be resettled in the future, when required by infrastructure development.
Original inhabitants living outside the city might choose to remain but would have no indigeneship
rights because every citizen of Nigeria living in the FCT shall enjoy the equal residency status.
Consequently, those entitled to resettlement under the revised policy fell into two categories: those
who had opted to be moved out of the FCT and had received compensation between 1976 and 1978,
and those who remained but would be resettled within the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), outside
the Federal Capital City (FCC), whenever their places of abode were affected by city development
projects. We tasked a committee [96] to look at all the locations where infrastructure projects have
been delayed by resettlement issues, and recommend immediate remedial actions. The committee was
also required to revise and update resettlement and compensation fees that had been unaffected by
inflation since 1979. The committee submitted its report in April 2004, once community leaders were
finally persuaded to sign on to it. Implementing the recommendations was not without difficulties.
Due to incessant obstructions created by two recalcitrant local chiefs-- the District Head of
Galadimawa and Sapeyi of Garki-- I took the unprecedented decision to invoke the powers I had
under the act guiding the appointment of local chiefs and deposed them both, in December 2005. The
Sapeyi was exiled to Abaji for a period. We reversed the decision in 2007, after repeated
representations by other traditional rulers and assurances of good behaviour on the Sapeyi’s part.
Infrastructure development projects in the FCT proceeded unhindered as soon as we took the
deposition decision.
Satellite Towns Development
A major recommendation in the FCT Regional Development Plan Report was the establishment of
satellite towns to serve as “growth poles.” The Abuja Master Plan had envisaged that the informal
sector would, by the year 2000, make up 43% of the total labour force in the City proper. It was,
therefore, envisaged that the City’s support population would have to be accommodated in specially
designated Satellite Towns of about 100,000 – 150,000 population each. In order to reduce the
pressure on the city and ensure compliance with the Master Plan and the Regional Development Plan,
the creation of new Satellite Towns and upgrading of existing ones had become imperative by July
2003. Some of these Satellite Towns could serve as resettlement centres for the indigenous
population to be relocated from areas covered by the FCC Master Plan.
We sought Obasanjo’s approval (and budgetary support) to establish new Satellite Towns, in Kuje,
Gwagwalada and other areas. We also sought approval to upgrade some existing settlements to
Satellite Towns, considering such factors as proximity to existing infrastructure, such as
transportation.
The Satellite Towns Development Agency received unprecedented support and attention from
President Obasanjo and I, and had an exemplary team headed by Buhari Dikko, who was one of
FCDA’s pioneer civil engineers. Ongoing road improvement projects were concluded.
We also made progress in infrastructure development within the City and rest of the territory. We
were especially determined to improve the environment, completing sewage treatment plants,
landfills, and water treatment plants, in addition to clearing the landscape of thousands of broken-
down vehicles and other eyesores.
We improved and expanded public buildings and facilities as well. Notable examples include new
administrative wings for the National Assembly, additions to the Federal Secretariat complex, and
commenced work on the showcase Millennium Tower.
As was typical, many of these projects faced headwinds from entrenched interests. A case in point
was the permanent building of the FCT Administration, which was planned for a plot in the Central
Area that was illegally occupied by Bulet Construction Company. After we ejected Bulet, the
company obtained a court order followed by a judgment that found a way to justify the continued
illegal occupation, even in the absence of any title to the land. Bulet, a company owned by Ismaila Isa
Funtua, a politician, businessman and friend of the powerful, had been given a licence to occupy the
plot as a temporary site office for the construction of the neighbouring federal secretariat building.
But the license had long expired. Funtua had approached me in my first month as minister,
complaining that the permanent secretary, Dr. Babangida Aliyu, had refused to “regularize” the
allocation of the plot to him. But I established, upon investigation, that the plot was in fact earmarked
for the FCT building in the Abuja Master Plan. What was more, no private organization could be
allocated a plot in the Ministries Zone. Though I patiently explained this to Funtua, the logic of the
Master Plan meant nothing to him as the ultimate Nigerian big man. One of our judges, in his infinite
wisdom, has allowed him to so far have his way, and the FCT Administration building remains
unbuilt.
Abuja Technology Village
The Abuja Technology Village, or ATV, was a Federal Government-promoted project. The FCT was
mandated to anchor it in order for it to achieve speedy implementation. The project was aimed at
establishing Nigeria as the technology hub for Africa, and was billed as a free trade zone. The vision
of the ATV was to establish a platform for creating a sustainable knowledge economy.
We commissioned Aim Consultants in 2005 to prepare the master plan and urban design of the
village, as Nigeria’s first technology park, our future Silicon Valley. An excited President Obasanjo
named it Abuja Technology Village. We awarded the infrastructure development contract for the
construction of the ATV to Gilmor Nigeria Ltd., and persuaded the Nelson Mandela Institute to locate
the first campus of the African University of Science and Technology within the village.
All the major global technology companies with presence in Nigeria, such as HP, Cisco Systems,
IBM, Microsoft and Oracle, committed to locating their operations in the ATV, while Nigerian
companies like Zinox Systems and SocketWorks confirmed their interest to do the same. The ATV
project was still ongoing, had acquired “Free Zone” status and attracted massive private sector
interest by the time we left office. We explored the promotion of a 600MW independent power plant
for Abuja to ensure stable power supply to the ATV and accommodate the typically voracious
appetite of tech firms for power. A state-owned Chinese engineering company, CGC, expressed
willingness to finance, design and construct a gas pipeline from Ajaokuta to Abuja, to supply the
power plant. We began discussions with three c
ompanies to go into joint venture with Abuja
Investment Company Ltd., to implement these projects, but did not conclude the arrangements by the
time we left office. Luckily, after we left office, Yar’Adua’s economic adviser Tanimu Yakubu,
focused his interest and high-level attention on the ATV, ensuring it was not left to wither on the vine,
like many of our other initiatives. The ATV may well be a reality sometime soon, under the able
leadership of my former special assistant, Hauwa Yabani. [97]
The technology village currently hosts the African University of Science and Techonology, an
initiative of African diaspora academics under the aegis of the Nelson Mandela Institute. Taking a cue
from MIT as well as the Indian Institute of Technology, their vision is to establish four campuses of
excellence for the AUST to train high quality engineers, scientists and humanities professionals. The
initiative enjoyed the early support of the World Bank, African Development Bank, the UK
government, and the European Union. Dr. Frannie Leautier, then Director of the World Bank Institute
who now runs the Africa Capacity Development Foundation out of Harare, was the lead promoter of
the project. She coordinated bilateral and multilateral efforts to realize the project. Abuja competed
with Tanzania to host the first campus and won, by offering serviced land along the Airport Road,
twice the size offered by the Tanzanian government.
However, the promised support from the bilateral and multilateral sources was late in materialising,
so the FCT Administration and agencies of the Federal Government bore most of the set-up costs of
the university. In 2005, the FCTA spent over N100 million for offices, furniture and equipment,
vehicles, staff salaries and consulting fees for the planning and design of the university. Another N200
million was expended by the FCTA in 2006 for staff salaries, various consultancy fees for
environmental impact, topographical survey, hydrological studies, architectural designs, land
clearance and fencing, and the meetings and conferences of the African diaspora professors that came
to Abuja for the project’s ground breaking ceremony in December 2006. FCTA also signed an
infrastructure construction contract with Gilmor Nigeria Ltd., for the ATV, which included the AUST.
We relocated the Chinese construction giant, CCECC, from the proposed AUST site, but persuaded
the company to leave behind their buildings for the immediate take-off of the university.
The FCTA, therefore, provided virtually all the initial setup funding. The government-funded
Petroleum Technology Development Fund, or PTDF, then headed by Adamu Maina Waziri, granted
$25 million to build the Gulf of Guinea Institute (G2i) within the AUST campus. The institute is to
serve as a continental centre of excellence in petroleum engineering and related technologies. The
first set of masters degree students of the AUST, drawn from several African countries, enrolled in
September 2008. The university has proudly graduated at least three sets of masters’ degree holders
from several African countries by 2011.
The Abuja Transportation Plan
Similarly determined efforts went into tackling transportation challenges. We reviewed and updated
the Abuja Transportation Plan to include new settlements like Nyanya and Karu whose unexpected
growth and rapid urbanization were not envisaged by the Master Plan. This led to the creation of a
bus system comprising three integrated lines and concessions - National Unity Line (Green) FCT’s
Abuja Mass Transit Company (Red) and Sonic Global Company[98] (Yellow) - to connect parts of
the city, satellite towns and major population centres within and outside the FCT. We granted the
companies land for their maintenance and parking terminals, obtained import duty, VAT and tax
waivers from the Federal Ministry of Finance for them, encouraged banks doing business with FCTA
to finance the acquisition of their fleet. Our plan was for the bus operators to continuously expand
their fleets so as to reduce bus-waiting time to not more than 5 minutes anywhere in Abuja by
December 2009. The once ubiquitous ‘El–Rufai’ Cabs - a territory-wide taxi system using the London
Taxis and Dark Green Peugeot 307 as the two acceptable prototypes also came out of this effort. The
goal was to get all the rickety second hand taxis off Abuja’s streets, inculcating the habit of hire
purchase and deferred payment acquisition, making regular payments and encouraging
entrepreneurship. This we achieved by securing import duty, VAT and tax waivers for Peugeot
Automobile Nigeria, Kaduna, thereby enabling the Abuja Leasing Company Ltd (a public-private
partnership with a handful of commercial banks) to lease the cars to owner-drivers upon the payment
of three hundred thousand naira – about the price of a second-hand vehicle. We also brought in safety
training and street location experts from London Taxis to train the first batch of drivers in safety,
security, locating street names and numbers, and customer service, at our own cost and only those
who were fluent in English, and had passed the final test were allowed to acquire or drive the cabs.
Finally, we also embarked on the establishment of a light rail network, which groundbreaking was
presided over by President Obasanjo in the waning days of his administration, in May 2007. When
operational, the Abuja Metro system was to be powered initially by diesel, convertible later to
electricity, with the capacity to transport about 20,000 passengers per hour at very affordable prices.
Had the project been allowed to proceed, it would have been completed before December 2010, and
Abuja would have joined over 100 cities with metro systems including London (which commissioned
its Underground in 1863) and Cairo in Africa (that commissioned its own system in 1987).
Regrettably, the project later fell victim to a particularly destructive Nigerian disease, the successor
abandonment syndrome, as a result of which the light rail network project remains “ongoing”.
Human Capital Development
The Education Secretariat was established in June 2004 as one of the mandate secretariats in line
with FCT’s administrative reform programmes. This was informed by education being an instrument
of economic, scientific, technological, social and political empowerment for the individual and the
society at large. We wanted to ensure the provision of qualitative, accessible and affordable
education to the entire inhabitants of the FCT at primary, post-primary and tertiary levels.
The FCT education secretariat achieved a lot under its two secretaries between 2004 and 2007. We
increased budgetary provision for education from 5% of FCTA’s total budget in 2003 to about 20%
by 2007; a total of 250 new classrooms were constructed between 2004 and 2005, with hundreds
more under construction by 2007; 987 sets of classroom furniture were provided for 237 primary
schools in all the FCT area councils; and 145 classrooms were constructed in 75 primary schools in
the FCT area councils
We also rehabilitated 462 classrooms in 75 primary schools and introduced a school shuttle bus
system to convey uniformed students to and from schools; not only to provide succour to those who
could not afford the high transport fare, but to also check cases of truancy and lateness on excuses of
transportation difficulties. We acquired buses for senior secondary schools in th
e FCT to ease the
transportation difficulties of staff and students who needed buses for academic and recreational
activities such as excursions, inter school academic and sporting competitions and for emergencies.
We equipped schools with computers to promote information and communication technology (ICT)
and expose students to modern trends in teaching and learning in order to stimulate their urge to
engage in research. This was actualized through collaboration with Intel Corporation, World
Computer Exchange Programme and Professor Nicholas Negroponte of MIT, and sponsorships from
MTN, Zenith Bank and the Education Tax Fund.
We improved the quality and quantity of teaching staff throughout the FCT by recruiting 700 qualified
UBE teachers and 590 teachers in key subject areas in the senior secondary schools. An additional
1,200 teachers were contributed by the Federal Ministry of Education through its Federal Teachers’
Scheme as we sought to reduce the student-teacher ratio to a reasonable level. In terms of welfare,
teachers enjoyed a 25% increase in pay compared to 15% for other public servants in the FCT
engaged in non-teaching activities and an award system for students and school teachers was
instituted in the 2006-2007 academic year with the star prize of a brand new car for the winner. This
was an effort to encourage students to strive for good results. Teachers, principals and staff of the
education secretariat were also recognised for exceptional performance. We also trained teachers on
modern teaching methods, principals and vice principals on management principles and non-teaching
support staff on relevant ancillary competencies
Finally, we had an education sector plan (ESP) prepared in collaboration with the World Bank and
the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID). The ESP was addressing
the gaps in the FCT education sector and budgeting for a 10-year development plan. The Education
The Accidental Public Servant Page 46
