Abuja Natives Demand Justice After Decades of Dispossession, Silence

DDM News

In Nigeria’s political capital, Abuja, beneath its opulent architecture and wide boulevards, lies a disturbing truth that has been ignored for far too long.

The Original Inhabitants (OIs) of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), whose ancestors gave up their ancestral lands for national development, continue to live as landless, voiceless, and forgotten people nearly five decades later.

Diaspora Digital Media (DDM) reports that this prolonged injustice was recently brought to the global stage during the 17th session of the United Nations Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, held in Geneva, Switzerland.

There, Dr. Ibrahim Mualeem Zikirullahi, Executive Director of the Resource Centre for Human Rights & Civic Education (CHRICED), gave a bold presentation detailing the gross violations faced by over 2.5 million indigenous people in Abuja.

According to Dr. Zikirullahi, since 1976 when Abuja was designated as Nigeria’s new capital, the OIs, comprising nine tribes and seventeen chiefdoms, have witnessed the systematic takeover of their lands without fair compensation. They have also been politically sidelined and culturally marginalized.

Despite repeated court rulings affirming their rights, the Nigerian government has continued to treat these communities with indifference and disdain.

One of the most glaring forms of exclusion is the absence of a Governor and State House of Assembly in the FCT. Unlike citizens in other parts of Nigeria, Abuja’s natives cannot elect leaders who can represent their unique local interests.

Although there have been symbolic appointments of indigenes as ministers or heads of certain commissions, these gestures remain superficial. Key leadership positions in the territory are still dominated by non-natives.

Furthermore, DDM observes that indigenous settlements are frequently demolished without adequate notice or resettlement.

Many of these communities still lack essential infrastructure, clean water, electricity, roads, schools, and hospitals, despite living in the capital city of Africa’s largest economy.

The people whose forefathers gave up their homes for a national vision are now treated as second-class citizens.

Dr. Zikirullahi urged the global community to hold Nigeria accountable to its commitments under the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

He called for urgent and comprehensive reforms to restore justice, dignity, and political rights to Abuja’s OIs.

The Abuja Original Inhabitants are not seeking sympathy. They are demanding justice, land justice, political representation, and respect for their cultural identity. In a nation that professes democracy, no one should be made a stranger in their own homeland. It is time to act.

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