Commendation to the FCT minister

We must find time to commend our leaders when we find them doing the right things, lest we be seen as rabid dogs always barking at passers-by, and be treated as such, and so that they will do more progressive things. I am taking this opportunity to praise the FCT Minister, Muhammad Bello. I haven’t heard many people praising him and I heard he is just another docile fellow. I decided to keep my eyes open though, to be able to make my mind up about his direction. I believe I can make a judgment call now, without being totally off the mark.

I believe that Bala Muhammad, the last FCT Minister was an unmitigated disaster, and that is evident in the fraud cases that he and his son are involved in for which they are being prosecuted in the courts. I am less interested in the lands that these FCT Ministers grab for themselves; lands that they don’t know what to do with. I am simply concerned with the maintenance of Abuja infrastructure and by extension, the kind of life that a resident like myself, gets to live as a result of the quality of administration. So my disappointment with Bala is borne out of the decay of Abuja under his nose. You see, Abuja is like the bedroom and sitting room of any Nigerian leader, and the way it depreciated under Goodluck and Bala, and all the ministers and big men of that era, shows the baseness of their own minds. My verdict.

I wrote an article once titled “If You Cannot Fix Abuja You Cannot Fix Nigeria”, in which I pointed the relative ease with which Abuja could be maintained to look pristine and set the standards for every other state or city in Nigeria, and the appalling incompetence that is the lot of this city built from the scratch with crude oil dollars. I noted the graffiti all over town - in a diplomatic city for that matter; to the extent some Gigolo paints his numbers on bridges in the busiest place, soliciting for customers. Painters, Electricians, Motor Mechanics and other artisans have also taken advantage of this free advert and defacement of the city because there is absolutely no administrative competence and no anger in the belly of those who run this city. Mushroom churches take delight in plastering every bridge and open space with their banners promising some miracle or the other. Our administrators seem not to understand the idea of ‘visual pollution’ and see no big deal with these things. Prosecuting offenders should not be a problem because they usually leave their phone numbers and addresses on these free, defacing adverts. Till date, this continues. As in every situation, silence means license. Since the government is not bold or competent enough to prosecute offenders, every idiot just gets bolder.

I visited Kano some months back and noticed it’s not that way. No one dares paste any nonsense on the red and white bridges built by Kwankwanso. Yet, Kano has more than its fair share of miscreants. Comparing the road dividers in Kano with that of Abuja makes one marvel. How can we have better minds running Kano than the ones running Abuja? How come this Federal Capital is run worse than some local governments in Nigeria? Is there a curse on this country? Other major capitals are well run too. Enugu is pristine. Minna is not looking too bad these days. Akure is splendid. Forget Ibadan and Oshogbo, but Lagos is one place where the governor is showing a lot of class. Abeokuta is coming up too.

Under Bala, the suburbs became something else, even as his many demolitions did not work. One day I drove to Aleyita on the way to the Abuja airport, and I realized that indeed the prayers of ghetto dwellers had been answered because they have triumphed over luxury estate builders who thought they could be squeezed out of existence. Flying into Abuja one will see that the shanty settlements are expanding and enveloping the tired luxury estates that were built under the corrupt and delusional government of Bala Muhammad and Goodluck Jonathan. How they could have expected to use luxury estates to squeeze out the millions of poor Nigerians begets belief. No plans were made for the poor and wretched people who work for ogas in Abuja, or for the indigenes. All that was done was to keep allocating lands for luxury estates. Now, most of the luxury estates are decrepit, abandoned or uncompleted, and the shanties are expanding with full force. What a tragedy! The new minister however said he wasn’t going to demolish houses as a policy. I don’t know what his plans are to restore any sanity though.

That is not my reason for praising Muhammad Bello though. I am praising him for the excavation of the blocked drainages and manholes of Abuja. Abuja, a well-planned, heavily invested city suddenly started having flash floods. One of such floods swept away an APC BOT member in Gwarimpa. The current administration must have seen that indeed under them Abuja is failing. It is a matter of time before we raise up our hands in despair and give up.

And so everywhere we go in Abuja today, we see loads of dirt being evacuated from these manholes. Each one has a huge heap beside it. Ordinarily, these manholes and drainage points ought to be excavated a couple of times yearly, but since Abuja was established this is the first time. Around Stadium I saw that several tyres were evacuated from one single manhole. This is a town where anything goes! Mentally challenged people go around doing whatever they want. No one challenges them. Thieves live under our many bridges. No one seems to care about the security challenges of having so many porous places. Those who paste posters work night and day. No one challenges them. It’s a city with no rules. Let’s not talk about those who drive one-way.

But I must commend the current minister for taking an initiative which no one has bothered to take - not even El Rufai. Well, my readers must know by now that I’m big on the environment and believe it is our starting point if we must progress because it is a focus on environment that can allow us to start a serious mental reset for our people who have lost every sense of propriety and now live anyhow. The focus on the environment - a novel one - in Abuja reminds me of what started in Kaduna some months back, but has now been abandoned. We hear there is some fraud in the attempt to dig drainages in Kaduna, but when I saw the drainages in KD, I was happy, because it also reminded me of the FD Roosevelt strategy in the USA. In a recession, huge public works puts money in the pockets of a lot of people, and where better to start than the environment.

However, for Abuja, many people have complained that the government seems to have no plans to evacuate the huge heaps of refuse dug out of the drainages. Also, many of the manhole covers have since been made away with. Each one costs like N50,000 and is usually removed by criminals and resold to new road construction projects. Now that the manholes have been dug up, new traps have been set for human beings and cars to fall into.

I can also tell the Honorable Minister that the suburbs and entrances to the pristine city of Abuja - Gwagwalada, Nyanya/ Mararaba, and Zuba/Suleija/ Madala, are still in a shameful way. Tidying of the city centre will not be enough. But kudos to him for now. I think he has taste.