Now in her 80s, Lami Ezekiel remembers construction crews arriving in her ancestral home in Maitama, as it was destroyed to build Nigeria’s capital, Abuja.
“We just saw big trucks and construction vehicles destroying our farms,” she recalls.
This was in the late 1980s. She, like others who lived on the land on which the city was built, say they are still waiting for the compensation they were promised at the time.
The planning for the new capital right in the centre of the country began a decade earlier.
On 4 February 1976, the military government led by Murtala Muhammed created an area called the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) – 7,315 sq km (2,824 sq miles) of land carved from Niger, Plateau and Kaduna states.
Born in 1982 in Kabusa, which lies within the FCT, Isaac David remembers a childhood of streams and farmland where families drank water from springs and cultivated land that had sustained them for generations.
Today, where streams once flowed, stands a luxury hotel – the Transcorp Hilton Abuja.
Land once planted with crops now holds buildings such as the United Nations headquarters and the embassy of the United States.
Nigeria’s seat of power, the Aso Rock presidential villa, rests on what was once a community shrine.
“Those of us who want to farm now have to go and buy farmland on the outskirts of town,” says David, who now owns farms in neighbouring Niger state.
Lagos, the former capital, was seen as vulnerable because of its coastal location and politically sensitive because it lay in the heart of Yoruba land in a country managing ethnic rivalries.
Abuja was presented as neutral territory – officially described as “no man’s land”.
But for at least 10 indigenous groups, including the Gbagyi, whose homes and farms were replaced by ministries and mansions, that description still stings.
Daniel Aliyu Kwali, president of the FCT Stakeholders’ Assembly, noted that some anthropologists and historians say that communities have lived there for over 6,000 years.
“The FCT is just 50 years old; I am 70 years old. We are much older than the FCT.”
Getty Images Over the last four decades Abuja has grown from a small village into a huge city, where people from all over the country go to live and work
The government initially planned to relocate the “few local inhabitants” outside the territory, but reversed the policy.
“Because of the high cost of resettlement, the government allowed those who wished to remain in the FCT to do so,” said Nasiru Suleiman, director of resettlement and compensation at the Federal Capital Development Authority (FCDA).
This adjustment enabled some residents to stay, while those in central districts were relocated.
For many families, the process was traumatic and John Ngbako, then secretary of the community in Maitama, remembers his confusion.
He said he asked the authorities “what is wrong with us?” that they couldn’t live with the newcomers.
Community leaders say they were promised farmland, housing, and access to electricity and water in Kubwa, the relocation site.
But before negotiations were complete, security forces arrived.
Families were loaded on to tipper trucks and driven about 30 minutes away to Kubwa, an area where residents say basic amenities were missing and tensions emerged with the original inhabitants.
Laraba Adamu, who was newly married at the time, remembers hostility at the river where she fetched water.
“People would see us coming and say: ‘The government cows have arrived,'” she says.
Ezekiel, sitting outside her two-room house where she has to cook outside, says: “When we were moved, they promised us all the social amenities.
“None of them have been fulfilled. The water we drink, we buy. The electricity we use, we buy. And we have no farmland.”
The community calls itself Maitama-Kubwa, preserving the name of the neighbourhood they were forced to leave behind.
Esu Bulus Yerima Pada, a descendant of a long line of traditional rulers who became chief of Maitama-Kubwa in 2001, says the government also promised documents confirming residents’ legal ownership of their new land.
“Up to today, they have not done it,” he says.
Community members sometimes take their children to Maitama, now one of Abuja’s most expensive neighbourhoods, to show them where their forebears lived.
“Even the banana trees our forefathers planted are still there,” Chief Pada said.
Tensions over land and demolition persist.
Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani Princess Juliet Jombo standing in front of the grave of her father, a traditional ruler
On 13 March 2025, bulldozers demolished homes in Gishiri, an indigenous community predating the FCT.
Thirty-two-year-old schoolteacher Princess Juliet Jombo says properties built by her late father, a traditional ruler, were reduced to rubble.
“Everything my father worked for in his life and left for us. Everything,” she says.
Her one-bedroom flat was initially valued at 260,000 naira ($170; £135). This was later raised to about 520,000 naira after protests but she says this was insufficient to secure alternative housing.
The demolition also destroyed the community primary school, leaving nearly 500 pupils out of class for months.
Suleiman of the FCDA maintains that the resettlement process is consultative and that compensation is paid directly into recipients’ accounts or houses are built in lieu of cash.
But activists argue that all this happens too late.
“By law, the government must first dialogue with the people who have a right to choose a place where they feel safe,” David says.
“Then the government should build houses and relocate them to the new site.”
David, whose activism has earned him the nickname “Commander”, became politically active in the mid-2000s after learning about the FCT’s unique constitutional status.
He and others say the issue is not just about land and compensation, but also political exclusion.
Unlike Nigeria’s 36 states, the FCT has no elected governor. Instead, the president appoints a minister from anywhere in the country with powers similar to a state governor.
“As an indigene of Niger, I could contest elections as governor of Niger state,” says Kwali.
“But now, I have no constitutional right to elect a governor, and I cannot run for the position myself. Other Nigerians can become governor, but I never can.”
Also, anyone residing in Abuja can contest local offices regardless of origin, unlike in other parts of Nigeria where such positions are reserved for those with local family origins. Several elected representatives in the FCT have come from other parts of the country.
“But I cannot go to your own village and contest for office there and expect to win,” said 32-year-old Methuselah Jeji.
A new father, he worries about ceilings his child will face.
“My child can never be governor. That is very sad – not because I am not able but because the FCT is where God has placed me.”
David says the lack of indigenous representation helps explain why many communities around the FCT remain underdeveloped.
Adaobi Tricia NwaubaniEsu Bulus Yerima Pada, sitting on his throne, and John Ngbako want Abuja to have an elected governor, like Nigeria’s 36 states
In central Abuja, wide boulevards, embassies and high-rise apartments signal heavy state investment.
But in many indigenous settlements on the outskirts, roads are potholed, classrooms overcrowded, clinics understaffed, electricity unreliable and residents lack secure land titles.
“When we had our person in the Senate, we saw the difference,” David says, referring to Philip Aduda, the only FCT indigene elected to the Senate.
He lost the seat in 2023 to Ireti Kingibe, an Abuja resident originally from Kano.
Jeji’s father, Danladi, fears the peaceful approach pursued by activists may not last forever.
Many of their court cases have lingered unresolved for years, reinforcing the sense their concerns are ignored.
He worries that a younger, more politically aware generation may be less patient and more willing to confront the state: “It’s a bomb waiting to explode.”
Despite the frustration, David still emphasises non-violence.
“We can demand for our rights,” he says. “We want representation. We want to have a voice in our own land.”
Ezekiel is still hoping that the government will fulfil its promises, and give her land.
“If I could be given land to farm today, land where I and my children can work, I would be truly grateful,” she says. “I am still strong.”
