By Akinwale Kasali

Abuja is a sprawling city of grandeur: Beauty, elegance, pride and power. From the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, the city oozes aroma of strength and candour.

From twilight, the rows of street lights and flashy cars add to the stunning charm.

The urbanization, the good road channels, edifices, the connecting bridges and lurch green that greet every visitor paint the picture of a budding paradise.

From a rural homestead, adorned with large expanse of forestland with crisscrossing tributaries, inhabited by farmers and hunters, Abuja has grown to impose herself as the most beautiful bride in Nigeria. It is not only the home to Foreign Missions, International Agencies, most influential politicians and business icons find their feet in Abuja.

The high-brow hotels with their buzzing hundreds of foreigners, either cutting deals or opening up investment channels.

Abuja is unmistakably the Nigeria seat of political and economic power.

However, contrast to the aforementioned in that same Abuja are poverty-stricken communities, with rickety, desolate roads which one encounters in the city’s outskirts.

What has made their situation worst is the phenomenon of Climate Change.

“I grew up to meet lurch green vegetation. We had a very rich forest resource that served as the source of our health, our wellbeing and our spirituality”, Kadan Goje, 90, a retired teacher who resides in Yaba Community said.

Yaba Community is in Kwali Area Council, the Community belongs to the Ganagana People.

Kadan Goje said some sixty years ago when he was barely 30, Abuja communities had some of the most diversified ecosystem with varieties of plants, animals and trees.

“What I see today is unbelievable. We have lost everything”, he said as he wept intermittently, adding that even to source firewood for cooking has become a problem.

The Abuja Original Inhabitants, (AOIs) were original farmers, hunters and fishermen and fisher-women. Their Men are reputed for agro-energy so also were their Women.

“We had a lot of land to farm until 1976 when the military told us our ancient land now belonged to the Federal Government of Nigeria”, Mark Ladi said.

The 80 Year Old Man from the Pai Community in Kuje Area Council said his parents were some of the richest in what is now Federal Capital Territory, (FCT).

“We had several acres of land. We even had thousands of livestock. When the military came, they took everything by force”, Ladi said pointing to a large stretch of plots said to have been recently annexed by the Nigerian Airforce.

The land has been fenced with the bold inscription, ‘Do Not Trespass.’

Ladi said the land belong to his family and that at no time did the Government had any discussion with any member of the family.

Speaking on human activities in Abuja Original Inhabitants’s villages, Ladi said his people are at the end of the stick. He listed such hazardous human activities to include destruction of trees, disrespect for traditional water sources and routes, dumping of industrial waste, pouching of animals, land excavation for illegal mining.

Abuja indigenous communities are rich in clay, tin, feldspar, gold, iron ore, lead, marble and talc. Activities include but not limited to underground mining, situ mining, placer mining and surface mining.

Underground mining involves tunnels carved to penetrate deep into the soil for mineral extraction.

Across the communities, tales of devastating impact of land seizure and acquisition of ancestral land by big companies for construction is widespread. In many cases, the first thing those who acquired the land did was to either cut down all the trees of burn the entire space.

Traditional rulers from the Gaube Community, a Traditional Settlement in Kuje Area Council who spoke to our correspondents complain about the felling of economic trees by ‘people who visit our communities with Government license to pouch vital trees.’

There are concerns that the natural flow of water and the ancient tributaries have been excavated and turned into estates for politicians and government officials.

Sometimes, the visitors uproot the trees or scorch the land for immediate gains.

One other major problem is bush burning. Many community leaders claim that apart from herdsmen who burn down the elephant grass for their cows to feed on the budding grass that come from the roots of burnt grasses, the herders also engage in indiscriminate bush burning.

With the chirping, croaking and ribbiting of frogs and other amphibians, sounding aloud, as

Children bath in an unclean stream in Kwali Community, a significant Gbagyi Town with no hope of a brighter future in sight.

The land that ought to bring forth food has become ‘barren’, and a scourge to farmers, making livelihood extremely difficult, with poverty and impoverishment taking center stage.

“Poverty, hunger and penury are the realities here”, said Pastor Abu Jaji of Gwagwalada in the outskirt of Abuja.

He told members of Network of Journalists on Indigenous Issues, [NEJII) that visited the communitied that climate change has impacted negatively on people living in indigenous communities in Abuja.

Many community leader argue that 50 years down the road, AOIs are yet to regain the lost of their customary land, sustains their farming activities as they continue to face threats of evictions and internal displacement by the government, leaving them to a horrible fate.

One traditional ruler who does not wish to be named said the multiplicity of the impacts of Climate Change is having severe toll on the AOIs, as their farmlands have been completely washed off through gullies that were products of indiscriminate attacks on land resources like mining which continue to lead to poor harvests and loss.

Locals claim their streams remained contaminated, as they do not have access to portable water which exposes them to water borne related diseases and other social deprivations.

They also complain about the destruction of rare animals which ancestors had occupied the Abuja forests for centuries.

“Our rare birds and animals are gone. Nature is being attacked viciously. There are no efforts to replace what we have lost”, another farmer in Jabi told our correspondent.

He said climate injustice means the AOIs losing their heritage and ancestral land to urbanization, with no compensation from the Government,  nor intervention in helping the AOIs adapting to the dynamics of the environmental conditions.

There were also reports about flood and droughts that continue to wreck havoc on AOI communities as their major source of livelihoods which is rain fed agriculture and local commerce is adversely affected.

Others say the forceful eviction of the AOIs from their ancestral homes for the urbanization of the FCT had a toll and further threatens their cultural identity, as they became wanderers with their identity blurred.

Lamenting the forcefully eviction by the Government, Usman Bala, a Gwari Man stated, “I am a billionaire given by the land taken away from my Father, sadly, am living in abject poverty and penury”, he stated.

He said the impact of climate change in the AOIs communities has left the people living in pains and agony with no respite in sight.

Climate change adds to the vulnerability and increased poverty prevalent in the area due to the degradation of their farmlands, which has led to food insecurity, with poverty ravishing the communities.

What compounds the problem is the health state of people in AOI communities. Malaria, diarrhea, typhoid are common diseases.

Many are worried that for the AOIs, hope is dim raising the call for the Federal Government to address climate issue bedeviling the AOIs communities.

In addressing the travails of the AOIs, Network of Journalists on Indigenous Issues, [NEJII] think there is need for the Government to  implement a climate-smart agriculture innovation,  by adopting sustainable livelihoods programs that would foster community-based adaptation strategies.

This however involves planting drought-tolerant crops, expansion of irrigation and  enhancement of  aquaculture.

There is also need to bring revive indigenous knowledge for environmental management to combat food insecurity and economic hardship affecting the people living in AOI communities.

This means the ecosystem of the communities should be addressed holistically,  with reforestation and sustainable land management as priorities.

By Akinwale Kasali

It is now 50 years since Abuja, Nigerian Federal capital was created. The indigenous peoples who own the land, have a different story from the grandeur and fame the city has assumed.

Jaji is 12 Years Old. He would have started his education at  three, coming from a family of teachers, sadly, his destiny changed due to the circumstances bedeviling his parents as indigenous people of Abuja.

In Jaji’s community, there are no schools. A thatched shanty made from palm-fronts were as the Kindergarten for children, some of them up to ten or eleven years old. The next primary school to the community is 10 kilometers away. He had to wait this long to endure the stress of trekking that far distance until he was 12.

“Initially, I felt ashamed, when I ought to be in secondary school, but my parents told me that it was not any fault of mine, that we are merely victims of circumstances,” the child  from Rubochi, a Gbagyi Community stated.

Jaji’s eyes was cascaded with tears, as he rolled his cheeks with his left hand, saying that his destiny has been cut short. For Mahmud, he started primary school when he was 13. ‘My parents did not want me to trek to school at a tender age. They waited until I was 13,’ he said

This is the plight of children in indigenous communities in Abuja, Nigeria’s Federal Capital which marked her 50th anniversary this February. Most children in these over 800 communities struggle for access to good and quality education. Their dream remains elusive, a nightmare they are yet to overcome.

In recent years, their travails have been compounded with kidnapping and banditry, putting the lives of children and women at risk.

In Wupa, a Traditional Riverside Community where Mrs Wadi Gade, a Gwari Woman resides, she narrated her ordeal, lamenting the spate of kidnapping and banditry bedeviling the Abuja Original Inhabitants, (AOIs). She said some children in the past had been kidnapped on their way to school. Explaining her travails, she said, “I had to withdraw two of my children from primary school. I would not risk their going to school on foot only to be kidnapped.

“The two children now accompany me to the farm with no defined future in sight”, Mrs Gade said.

According to her, “Regrettably, our Children in Abuja are at the receiving end. No access to education, we are defenseless. Why we watch the Federal Capital Territory grow in strength, our communities remain impoverished and excluded from mainstream development”, she stated.

Insecurity and lack of access to education in the communities make several children vulnerable, leading to premature adulthood, as many are forced to engage in child labour due to poverty, impoverishment and the instability affecting most families in the community.

Mrs Gade said the lack of education affects the capacity of young people in Abuja to secure good jobs. She said with the high rate of unemployment across the country, young people from Abuja Indigenous communities stand a very slim chance due to their lack of access to education.

While insecurity and lack of access to education make the future of the AOIs children bleak.

Medical facilities are unavailable leading to high maternal mortality rate.

Experts say over 80 percent of mothers in the communities do not have access to health workers present during childbirth, leading to high maternal mortality rates.

As part of the Network of Journalists on Indigenous Issues, (NEJII), we visited the communities in a week long tour. From Abuja main city, the tarred roads stopped, leading to snaky and bumpy roads akin to rural areas of Nigeria.

One was greeted with malnourished children in the Byazhin Community in Bwari Area Council,  who ran around the sandy soil, bathing in the open stream around the communities.

Though the women are hardworking, tilling the soil for planting and harvest, poverty and exhaustion is written on their faces.

Mrs Usman Duje, an indigene from Gwandara in the Karshi Community, which is primarily the settlement of the Gwandara Tribe shared her pains about the neglect been faced by the AOIs.

The widow said the future of her four kids look bleak as there is no fortune in sight.

“My four children don’t have any hope for the future, my three sons do menial jobs, they don’t have access to good education, our land was forcefully taken away which could have been their inheritance, but the Government took it away from us without compensation.’

Of her daughter who is married, she said the future of her two year old child remains unsecured, because what the Mother faced is surely what she will face.

“This is becoming a generational issue, we need help, come to our aid”, Mrs Duje stated.

The Indigenous people of Abuja include; Koro, Ganagana, Gbade, Ebira, Nupe, Gbayi, Bassa, Gwandara, Amwamwa and others. Abuja was created by military fiat in 1976 leading to the movement of the Federal Capital from Lagos to Abuja.

The military did not only take over the land at gun point, where compensation was paid, it was minimal. The exploitation of the homeland of the AOIs gave rise to a sprawling Abuja city state to the decline of their own economic fortunes.

The worries of the AOIs is that as the FCT is developing, while they are denied access to their biological resources and land rights, as their communities have become a shadow of itself, with impoverishment and poverty becoming their lot.

The neglect of the AOIs by the Federal Government of Nigeria, despite the takeover of their ancestral lands for infrastructural projects without adequate compensation, has left  the people of the communities in pain, anguish and impoverishment, with the voices of the people silenced which has brought to fore the call for the authorities to make the people enjoy the dividend of democracy and have a sense of belonging. Network of Journalists on Indigenous Issues, [NEJII],  Resource Centre for Human and Civic Education, [CHRICED) and MacArthur Foundation have been working tirelessly to advance the demands of AOIs.

Only recently, an Heritage Centre was built in Abuja that serves as Institutional memory for culture, language and civilisation of Abuja indigenous peoples.

No doubt, the various government policies beginning from 1976 have undermined the rights of AOIs who had lived in their ancestral home for thousands of years before the FCT was created in 1976 through a decree.

The Indigenous people are not alone. Various International instruments back their aspirations.

One example is the United Nations Universal Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 2007 and the International Labour Convention, (ILO) 169 mandates state actors to address the fears and aspirations of Indigenous peoples all over the world.

Many advocates are calling on the Federal Government to address the grievances of the AOIs and hearken to their cries, by giving them a listening ear, and making them have a sense of belonging, with their voices been heard.

Martin Oloja of The Guardian Newspaper criticised President Bola Tinubu and the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, Nyesom Wike, for their failure in celebrating Abuja’s 50th Anniversary, despite that the other Seven States created on the same day alongside Abuja on February 3, 1976, marked their Golden Jubilee with fanfare.

He argued that this further shows the marginalisation, neglect and exclusion of the AOIs from the ‘Mega City’ plan of Abuja.

Observers think the onus fall on the present administration of President Bola Tinubu to change the narrative by giving hope to the AOIs, and rewriting the history of the AOIs and bring hope where there is despair.