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What el Rufai must know
Andy Ike Ezeani
Minister of the
Federal Capital Territory, Nasir el Rufai visited Nyanya, on the outskirts of
Abuja, the other day. Characteristic of any visit to any part of the FCT by
‘whirlwind el’, an after-shock of substantial value on the appropriate scale
trailed the visit. Nyanya has not been itself thereafter.
Until el Rufai visited recently, Nyanya
had established and lived in a world of its own. It is, of course, so
inextricably attached to the apron strings of Abuja, the capital city.
Interestingly,it is not that straight-forward to determine between Abuja city
and Nyanya which is dependent on the other.
On the face of it,Nyanya appears every
inch like a poor relation of an affluent neighbour,a dependent through and
through, with its life-line and whatever vigour it so boisterously manifests,
from the benevolence of the apparently well fed and comfortably off city center.
By virtually all visible standard of measurement, Nyanya is worse off. Though
near and hugging the city proper, such tell-tale signs of discrimination as
power supply, water supply and street lighting put Nyanya where it belongs. In
case, it should begin to have ideas that it shares equal status with the main
city, subtle and not so subtle lines are regularly drawn to keep Nyanya in its
place.
But make no mistakes about it, Nyanya
holds its own ace too. It may seem like a less fortunate neighour, but it sure
pulls an enormous influence over big brother Asokoro just up the road. Indeed it
is difficult to imagine an Asokoro or a Wuse or the other prime city zones
without Nyanya.When the going gets tough in the capital territory, both the
tough and sundry beat the path to Nyanya.
Such was the case just last week, when the
fuel stations in the FCT locked up their pumps in one of these now common
protests against some policy. It was tough sourcing fuel in the city. Every fuel
station had a sizeable population of the cars in the city parked around it, some
stretching up to half a kilometer. At such points, when the mettle of tough
entities is put on trial, Nyanya proves its worth. Thus it was that what big
brother, affluent city center could not offer, Nyanya offered from its rather
vast, dark crevices that are at once ominous and reassuring.
On the face of it, this adjunct city is no
more than a vast jumbled landscape, a physical replication of a horrible
abstract art work, composed of haphazard residential buildings, bustling markets
and shanties, so intimately joined to produce a peculiar air of a camp and a
home land rolled into one.
In truth, Nyanya and Abuja city live a
mutually beneficial life. What the city can offer, Nyanya does not have and can
not offer. From its own end, what Nyanya can do, city zones cannot match.
The value and unique services of Nyanya
derive essentially from the shortcomings in planning and vision in Nigerian
governments over the years.Nyanya did not go to opulent Abuja city for anything.
It is Abuja, in its flawed magnificence that continues to draw Nyanya to itself.
And now, in that characteristic meanness of the rich and affluent towards their
less fortunate neighbour, Nyanya is being punished for the wrong done by the
rich neighbour.
In sending his bulldozers to go in and
demolish parts of Nyanya recently, Nasir el Rufai was simply doing what rich and
powerful people often do when confronted by their failure. The usual reaction is
first to run away from responsibility, then place the blame squarely on some
hapless, less fortunate neighbour.But is never a final solution to a problem. At
best, it is a postponement of the evil day. Sooner or later, the day of
reckoning comes for him who it must come.
Maybe Nyanya was bound to be go away,
sooner or later. The truth is that it is too close to the affluent city center
for comfort. But after bulldozing Nyanya - what next?
For all the guts and intelligence he is
credited with, el Rufai’s approach to issues in public policy is often
comfounding.His actions often tilt more towards a philosophy of bulldozing the
effects rather than tackling the root of the problem. Truth is that there is
nothing profound in this inclination.
Take Nyanya for example. Why is this
massive shanty town there at the door post of Abuja city? Nyanya exists because
the government has consistently failed to grasp the basic ideas in planning and
developing a city of the magnitude of Abuja.
Here is a late 20th century city that is
evolving in the 21st century, but there is no consideration for housing for
average and less than average workers in the city. Who ever finds people of the
middle class living in city centers in any city of the world that we seek to
copy from? Those who service major cities live tens and hundreds of kilometers
out of the cities. But in all those cities, there are public transportation
systems that offer regular, comfortable, affordable means of movements in and
out of the city centers.
The FCT minister knows well how it is in
Washington D.C. or London or Paris or Amsterdam or every other place. When he
bulldozes Nyanya out of existence and pushes the lower class of workers in Abuja
from the succour of Nyanya, what happens next?
It says something about the vision of
governments in our land that in all of five years, the present government has
not deemed it fit to develop a master plan for a modern rail transportation that
will save Abuja from the embrace of squalor and misery it is doomed to contend
with.
If with all the excess oil money and
extended economic good fortune of the Obasanjo government it cannot initiate a
modern rail system for Abuja, then something much more serious is the matter
with vision. No particular administration ever starts and finishes such a
comprehensive enduring system. It progresses in perpetuity.
The Washington D.C. metro system which is
one of the best in city transport systems in the world today continues to be
expanded. As the metro routes expand people gain more choices to live further
from Washington D.C. while coming to work therein. Life is better for it and the
city is better for it too.
Where does el Rufai want a civil servant
who is not hiding in Nyanya to now live and work from? There must be many today
in Abuja who would ordinarily prefer to live in Nasarawa and commute to Abuja
for work. But how are they to do it at the moment? By those rickety buses, some
of which never get to their destination? Government’s continued reference and
recourse to buses and road transportation as a means out of the public
transportation loop in the country today is as amazing as it is embarrassing.
What really is the problem with the specie of black man in Nigeria’s public
stations? Is it a lack of capacity in spite of all posturing or is it an innate
inclination towards promoting misery and poverty?
Sacking Nyanya may seem like some tough
stance, but in truth it manifests an unfortunate lack of understanding of what
the problem is and how to set about solving it. Until the FCT minister and the
government he serves develop a fast operating rail system on which workers can
commute in and out of Abuja, the city will never escape from the embrace of
slums. Sacking Nyanya is but one more act in multiplying the misery around
Abuja. It does not change anything really. And then, it makes the lives of both
the affluent and the displaced much more precarious. But who thinks in a
comprehensive way over here?
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