Can Nigeria live up to the democratic ideals inherent in its new capital city's design?

By Stephen Zacks
July 2001

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: Abuja City Gate; Bill Clinton Drive, the main road to the airport; Kado village, one of many shantytowns on Abuja's outskirts being demolished to make way for the utopian master plan.
Driving from the Abuja airport along Bill Clinton Drive, a gently curving road lined with acacia trees and electric streetlights, one encounters the impressive public image of the new capital city of Nigeria: clean, safe, orderly, and utterly modern. The contrast could not be starker in comparison to the former capital, Lagos, so unthinkably overcrowded that the razing of entire neighborhoods is being contemplated. Upon arrival at the Abuja City Gate, however, a more somber reality presents itself: sentries with machine guns stand watch over even the flower gardens, belying the city's motto, "You Are Welcome."

Designed in the late 1970s for the democratic aspirations of a Nigerian nation flush with petroleum dollars, Abuja was meant to create a stable setting for the country's first-ever elected government, forge a unified national identity, and make the government accessible to all of its 250 ethnic groups. The Abuja Master Plan, completed in 1979, was largely the work of the Philadelphia firm Wallace, Roberts & Todd; Japanese architect Kenzo Tange, inspired by Le Corbusier's proposed City for Three Million Inhabitants, designed the city center and most of the federal buildings in the early 1980s. The central city's core, the Three-Arms Zone, was supposed to represent the balance of power between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government. But before most of the plan could be completed a military coup intervened, followed by a series of increasingly brutal dictatorships.

THE METROPOLIS OBSERVED:
Nigeria's design for democracy; bringing the Rural Studio to Manhattan; farewell Detritus Institute; don't fence Droog in; L.A. needs parks-- Portland doesn't; remembering Sarah Tomerlin Lee; disposable cell phones; the Wexner Center deconstructs; private parks in public places.
Twenty years and seven governments later Nigeria is again a country with free elections and Abuja's development is again under way. The headquarters of the Economic Community of West African States is already located in Abuja, and the recently formed West African Subregional Parliament--the body that may eventually subsume 13 nations within a United States of West Africa--is to be located there. Nnamdi Elleh, author of a forthcoming book on Abuja, has called the city "the single most ambitious urban design project of the twentieth century." But despite the capital's inviting scenic vistas, triumphalist monuments, and African-influenced contemporary architecture, the government of Nigeria has yet to adapt to the democratic implications of its design. Public spaces are the architectural expression of a nation-state, but there is still no such thing as public space in Abuja--or for that matter any private property available to the 500,000 squatters living on the outskirts of the city.

The construction site of Nigeria's new National Stadium, in Abuja.
"The original planners had attempted to avoid what has happened in places like Brasília," says Akin Mabogunje, who surveyed the site for the city in 1976 and is now serving as an advisor for Abuja's second phase of development. "Because Brasília's planners didn't provide for the lodgings of the service population, massive shantytowns developed around the capital city. Unfortunately, no sooner had the Abuja plan been completed than politicians attempted to hurry the move, disrupting the smooth development of the city"--and creating slums. The Abuja Master Plan anticipated fewer than 200,000 residents during the present phase of construction. The administration believes that the population has already surpassed one million--a result of the work created by the stepped-up pace of construction during the oil boom of the 1980s, religious conflicts in the north, and typical problems of rural life that continue to draw villagers to the metropolis. The land within the central city, distributed by what is still considered the most corrupt government in the world, has largely fallen into the hands of the government ministers themselves, and the developments they've built have systematically priced out the service population. As a result peasants have been forced to build their homes on the outskirts using whatever resources are available: mud bricks and thatch, or, more commonly, thick branches supporting corrugated aluminum roofs.

Offsite:
See what Nigeria's government has to say about its capital city at www.nigeria-government.com/abuja.
"When you combine the population of the pockets that surround Abuja, you discover that it is much greater than the city itself," says Nosike Ogbuenyi, press secretary to the minister of the Federal Capital Territory. "As the population is growing some of the services are not keeping pace. Sanitation is one of the problems, because some buildings have been constructed on top of sewage lines and are disrupting the flow. Right now we are trying to map out the entire city so that no one else will be tempted to build in those places."

In democratic Nigeria, inconvenient administrative problems such as these are still adjudicated in the manner of their British colonial predecessors: by military force. Last October the soon-to-be-deposed minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Ibrahim Bunu, casually ordered the demolition of the villages of Kado, Garki, and Wuse, accomplished with bulldozers and a squadron of police. When the villagers came back from work, many of their homes were gone. It was a necessary step toward completion of the master plan: service population's shanties were in the way.

"We are currently planning to build housing for 650,000 people in Abuja," says M. S. U. Kalgo, director of the territory's Department of Land, Planning, and Surveying. "The developments will be built according to Walter Christaller's theory of hierarchical order of goods. The lower the order of economic goods, the shorter the distance you should have to travel to obtain them." The incoming administration claims that no more villages will be demolished without adequate warning and provision of low-income housing. But faith in the master plan on the part of government ministers and critics alike is seemingly impenetrable; no one appears to wonder if Abuja's problems have anything to do with the design of this absolutely planned place.

In any case, work on the capital has been hobbled by vices more native to Nigerian government than idealistic planning: a nationwide infrastructural crisis on a scale unheard of in even the poorest countries of the region undermines all but the most basic forms of human activity. The telephone system barely functions, the electric power grid is sporadic at best, and constant gasoline shortages result in quarter-mile-long queues at gas pumps. Federal ministers continue to occupy themselves by trading property for government posts and construction contracts. Last year the infrastructure had so deteriorated that work on the National Stadium, one of the major features of the new city, stopped while the contractor negotiated a special deal from the government: some of the country's petroleum, 50 percent of which is exported to the United States, would have to be diverted to the thankless job of nation-building.

Even critics agree that the project of building a capital to foster national identity is extraordinarily important for a country starved of unifying symbols and despoiled by its leaders. And at least as far as creating an ethnically neutral territory is concerned, Abuja has been a success, according to press secretary Ogbuenyi. "In Abuja you can find all of the tribes living together, and no single tribe has an absolute majority," he says. "So the political representation is very evenly divided." But it's this same cosmopolitan population whose homes will be destroyed through the government's single-minded adherence to the master plan.

From a distance an undeniable majesty prevails over the city of Abuja, which is dominated by Aso Rock, a huge granite mount that forms the backdrop to the city and once served as an ancestral shrine to the local tribes. At the base of the mount the fortresslike residence of the president and commander of the armed forces, presently occupied by Olusegun Obasanjo, provides the capital with unintended symbolism. Although hidden away, the residence has usurped the power of the presidential villa designed by Tange, which has sat abandoned up the road from the Nigerian Secret Service since the 1983 military coup. In effect, the executive arm has been severed and replaced by a clumsy strong arm. At Aso Rock the machinations of political power remain guarded from public view, much like the public monuments. Nigeria has built its modern African capital; now it's up to Nigeria's leaders to find a place for their citizens within it.


© Bellerophon Publications, Inc. 2004, All rights reserved.
Contact webmaster@metropolismag.com about any web site related technical problems.
For questions/changes to your Metropolis subscription, please contact our subscription department.
Free information from Metropolis advertisers is available from our Product Information department.
Privacy Statement