The Accidental Public Servant

by El-Rufai, Nasir

  Danjuma, was assigned the responsibility of midwifing Abuja to a successful birth. Under T Y

  Danjuma’s watch, the key decisions taken included the appointment of consultants for the preparation

  of the Abuja Master Plan, the ecological surveys, demographic audits and river blindness eradication

  schemes. The resettlement of original inhabitants and the policy modifications all had the thoughtful,

  decisive and balanced imprints of T Y Danjuma, a public leader highly respected in our nation.

  Obasanjo, therefore, considered Abuja almost like his own child. He had appointed two ministers –

  an architect and civil engineer in succession, between 1999 and 2003 to restore Abuja back on its

  originally planned path and roadmap of order and orderliness, but nothing much happened under their

  watch. Obasanjo was somehow confident that I could take on the assignment. That was the reason he

  selected me – a person that he ended up supporting like his own son - for the FCT assignment, and he

  added, that up to that point in time, I had not disappointed him.

  As earlier mentioned, the planning and development of Abuja were guided by the Master Plan that

  was prepared by International Planning Associates, an American firm. The Master Plan was to

  enable the emergence of a new City that would function better than Lagos. Though Abuja was

  conceived as a “Garden City”, it was also meant to be a functional and efficient one in terms of

  movement of people and vehicles within its boundaries. Obasanjo’s anger was that the vision of

  Abuja’s founding fathers was being lost due to the distortion of the Abuja Master Plan over the years.

  This was essentially the situation until July 2003 when our administration assumed office.

  Challenges Abuja Faced in 2003

  At inception, the challenges before us were rooted in every facet of the development of the FCT - as

  referred to severally in this book, not just in Abuja City itself but the surrounding ‘Satellite Towns’.

  As the territory’s population had far exceeded the planned capacity of available infrastructure and

  other facilities, the city had become filthy and unruly, surrounded by unplanned squatter settlements,

  with over-stretched infrastructure. While the planned population of the city by the end of Phase 4 was

  projected at three million inhabitants, we were informed in our ministerial briefings that the territory

  contained over six million people, with only parts of Phases 1 and 2 completed in mid-2003.

  There were many other infrastructural and social challenges. For instance, there was congestion in

  FCT schools; some had 120 students in classrooms designed for 30. The FCT had 14 hospitals with

  about five under construction, at various stages of completion. The roads were congested. The water

  supply plan envisaged the building of ten storage tanks around the city as well as the orderly

  expansion of the water treatment capacity, which by 2003 could only serve 650,000 people.

  Many buildings, structures and shanties in the city were built on water pipelines, sewer trunk lines,

  under high-tension electric lines and on green areas. Violations of land use regulations were rampant,

  with plots designated for schools or religious institutions developed as residential or commercial

  facilities and so on. Most of these were overlooked in the past due to the immense cost of removal

  and the compensation payable by the government as many of the structures had approved Building

  Plans and Certificates of Occupancy.

  The restoration of the Abuja master plan meant demolishing some of these buildings, recovering parks

  and green areas, clearing squatter settlements and expanding infrastructure and social services to meet

  the needs of the rapidly expanding population of Abuja and its environs. I will describe briefly how

  we planned and executed this controversial programme, which, as Machiavelli rightly observed of

  citizens’ resistance to beneficial change, only attracted due recognition and accolades years after we

  left office.

  Preliminary Review and Early Signals

  The two volume handing-over notes I received from the then Abuja Permanent Secretary, Dr.

  Babangida Aliyu, [76] had little to say about illegal structures and other master plan violations. I

  realized that unless I asked questions and dug deeper, no one was willing to talk about these thorny

  issues. Consequently, on the 5th of August 2003, I asked Mallam Sani Kalgo, the Director of Land

  Administration & Resettlement, to brief me on an international conference he had co-hosted on behalf

  of the MFCT on the review of the Abuja Master Plan in 2001. After the briefing, during which Mr

  Kalgo handed me a copy of the publication of the conference proceedings, I directed the permanent

  secretary to furnish me with the several studies and reports related to the design, implementation and

  distortions of the Abuja Master Plan. By the time my aides and I reviewed, digested and summarized

  these reports, we realized that non-compliance with the Master Plan was inhibiting Abuja’s potential

  to provide basic services to residents. The city’s green corridor had been abused, for instance, by

  locating army barracks in areas for a national monument and landscaping for tourism and the addition

  of unplanned districts like Guzape, Kpaduma and Kurunduma. Obstruction of flood plains by

  buildings would lead to major flooding in areas like Kubwa. The misappropriation of green areas and

  construction of corner shops had deprived Abuja of proper parks and shopping malls respectively.

  The squatter communities that have emerged to overwhelm the satellite towns of the FCT have

  become unsanitary urban sprawls that must be removed and relocated sooner or later. Garki Village,

  a slum within the Federal Capital City, had become unmanageable, reminding everyone of Obalende

  near South-West Ikoyi, Lagos. All these issues needed to be addressed in addition to the expected

  attention and interest in the demolition of some visible buildings.

  The good news was the realization that all the information needed to begin the restoration programme

  had always been available in the ministry. A meeting with the Director of Development Control, Olu

  Ogunmola, produced a list of over 300 illegal structures already identified for revocation of title,

  notification and immediate removal. He was eager to start, but I decided otherwise. First, I briefed

  President Obasanjo and Vice President Atiku Abubakar of what we had found, and what the next

  steps were going to be. I then obtained the consent of the president to begin the restoration exercise on

  30th August 2003, with the removal of some buildings on a trunk sewer line along Accra Street. We

  picked this location for its double demonstration effect – the street smelt from the odour of raw

  sewage, so there was little dispute of the impact of the distortions, and the recovered area was to be

  converted into a park for the enjoyment of the neighbourhood. I requested President Obasanjo’s

  presence to bless the kick-off of the restoration. He confirmed immediately, cancelling a planned

  weekend in Ota to be there.[77] We then approved the removal of buildings and fencing put up by

  some high profile Nigerians[78] to send the signal that no one was above the law in FCT.

  Task Force on Master Plan Enforcement

  With our signalling phase over, we ordered a suspension of the exercise for a week. Then we

  constituted a task force to oversee and execute the programme to ensure that from th
en on, every case

  went through rigorous inter-departmental review and recommendation before I approved removal.

  This ‘task force’ approach also served another purpose common in public service – sharing of blame

  and responsibility for what we knew would be an unpopular, controversial course of action. All the

  key MFCT directors were members of the Task Force, [79] and we gave them the mandate to co-opt

  any officer needed to execute the assignment. The task force met initially weekly, which became daily

  when I gave the deadline of December 31, 2003 for the completion of all restoration operations

  within the Federal Capital City. The Task Force sent me weekly reports and daily memoranda to

  approve the removal of structures that violated the development control regulations. We could not

  remove every building that violated the master plan as they were many and would have been too

  heavy a burden on our resources. We therefore had to prioritise and decide which buildings

  constituted the most serious threats to the inhabitants of Abuja – these were those sitting on sewer

  lines, water trunk lines, under high tension electricity lines and transportation (road, transit way,

  flood plains, etc.) reservations. Some parks and green areas were recovered, but many were lost

  permanently because of the quantum of compensation that would have been payable if we chose to

  revert strictly and completely to the original Master Plan.

  The Results of Enforcement Efforts

  In the end, we removed some 945 buildings within the Federal Capital City, about 300 in Kubwa and

  about 12,000 shanty structures and buildings in some of the squatter settlements in Idu-Karmo, parts

  of Jiwa, Gwarimpa, Jabi and Anguwan Mada. In addition, about 11,000 illegal structures and

  containers were removed to restore Wuse Market to its original design. Additional new shops were

  also built in the market. We relocated 30,215 traders occupying the site of the Abuja Central

  Shopping Mall in Central Area to Dei-Dei, thus clearing the fire-prone Bakassi Market.

  We recovered 33 green areas, developed and commissioned twelve recreational parks all over the

  City and the satellite towns. We developed an irrigated tree nursery with over 30 indigenous varieties

  of plants at Wuse II, the first of its kind in Nigeria. We procured, propagated and nurtured to maturity

  about one million seedlings to trees that were planted in the city. When the parks became very

  popular, we introduced park rules and regulations alongside a policy document that guided the

  development and management of parks in the FCT. We had great ambitions for Jabi Lake, but sadly,

  we were unable to get both banks of the lake developed with the recreational and tourist facilities we

  had dreamt of. [80]

  We cleared all illegal buildings on transit ways, [81] removed three wrongly located petroleum

  stations[82] that compounded the traffic congestion at AYA junction, and built an overhead bridge

  and roundabout to ease traffic in the area. We recovered and secured the Gudu and Gwarimpa

  cemeteries, and clearly demarcated them between Christian, Muslim and Unclaimed corpses with

  Abuja Environmental Protection Board in charge of their management and maintenance. We re-

  introduced the regime of house-to-house sanitary inspection in the City and outskirts, inspecting some

  68,856 houses at the end of 2006, initiating prosecutions and issuing abatement orders for violations

  to 23,749 households.

  As part of our efforts to restore orderliness to the City, we implemented a street naming and house

  numbering scheme for Phases 1 and 2 of the Federal Capital City. Many people are unaware that

  Abuja has a naming system for districts, expressways, streets within districts and so on. All districts

  derived their names from the original Gbagyi settlements nearest to, or within the districts like

  Maitama, Wuse and Garki. Expressways and parkways in the FCT were named only after former

  presidents and vice presidents respectively like Murtala Mohammed (ONEX) and Nnamdi Azikiwe

  Expressway (Ring Road 1). Arterial and collector roads honoured some of our founding fathers and

  foremost nationalists. Each district had a street naming scheme. For instance, street names in Maitama

  originate from natural features – rivers, lakes, mountains and the like. [83] Garki’s are named after

  local government headquarters in Nigeria, and Wuse streets recognized African cities and so on. I

  will now take a few cases of the master plan enforcement that became controversial to throw some

  light on what really happened and why.

  Corner Shops and Neighbourhood Centres

  In the context of the Abuja Master Plan, the neighbourhood centres were the lowest point in the

  hierarchy of community facilities and services within the territory. Each neighbourhood centre was to

  contain at least a primary/nursery school, police station, post office, clinics and grocery shops. When

  the government could not immediately construct the neighbourhood centres as planned, the Gado

  Nasko administration sub-divided the neighbourhood centre plots into smaller plots – for 'corner

  shops', and issued five-year licenses to develop these small shops as stop-gap measures. The

  intention was to remove these as soon as conditions permitted for properly-designed shopping malls

  to replace them. The plan, according to former minister Gado Nasko[84] was to withdraw the

  licenses on expiration of the initial period to give way to the development of truly modern

  neighbourhood centres.

  Instead, corner shops assumed a life of their own and became permanent features of the FCC, going

  beyond occupying neighbourhood centre plots to include the wrongful conversion of parks, green

  areas, flood plains and transit way reservations. The list of corner shop allottees read like "who is

  who" of Nigeria, and blighted the landscape. An interdepartmental committee on Corner Shops and

  Neighbourhood Centres[85] was therefore formed to study the whole issue and make

  recommendations. They reviewed and inventoried all corner shop allocations by AEPB,

  Development Control and all MFCT Departments, submitting a report in August 2004. On 13th

  August 2004, we published a six months’ notice in national newspapers revoking and withdrawing all

  development permits for corner shops and open spaces in the FCT. [86] As our plans to remove the

  corner shops progressed, I received a report from the State Director of the SSS dated 17th May, 2005

  titled – ‘Imminent threat to law and order by Amalgamated Neighbourhood and Corner Shop Owners

  Association in the FCT’. The association, led by one Kola Martins, had met and issued a press

  statement urging us to reconsider the decision to remove the corner shops. On June 2nd 2005, we

  invited all corner shop owners and tenants to a meeting and agreed on strategies for the

  redevelopment of the neighbourhood centres. We restated that there would be no going back on the

  decision to remove the corner shops. We persuaded those that attended that we intended to give them

  the first opportunity to redevelop the locations of their business, and not take the land back for our

  friends and cronies, as they had alleged.

  The resolutions from the meeting were widely published in several newspapers. [87] We maintained a

  standing committee to continue engagement with the corner shop owners and tenants throughout the

  removal and redevelopment period. We then removed more than 1,215 such shops,
and encouraged

  the licensees and occupants of the corner shops to form incorporated associations to redevelop the

  plots into shopping malls that they could own jointly or as tenants-in-common, in accordance with

  guidelines issued by the FCT Administration.

  Abuja Investment Company prepared Prototype Preliminary Designs for the Neighbourhood

  Centres to guide the associations and reduce the time taken for developing design briefs and

  schematic designs. The terms of conditional grant required the associations to move to site and begin

  development within six months of offer. Thereafter, they were to proceed diligently with the works to

  the satisfaction of the Department of Development Control. At the time, plots similar in size and

  location to those of these centres were being alienated for at least N100 million each in the open

  market. We were interested in serious developers and took a decision to grant these titles in three

  steps. Upon a payment of N1 million, a license to develop would be issued to qualified developers.

  As soon as they begin work on site within six months of initial offer, a firm letter of offer (called R of

  O in FCT parlance) would be issued when buildings reach a certain level. A firm title in the form of a

  Certificate of Occupancy with a 99-year tenor is then issued upon achieving more substantial

  completion.

  In general, we found that the physical progress on site of the various associations at the dates of

  withdrawal (more than 12 months after initial offer) fell below expectations. We therefore withdrew

  the ‘licenses to develop’ for violating the terms of offer and invited other reputable business

  organizations to take over under conditions that were even more stringent. Virtually all the reputable

  developers had already achieved substantial progress by the time we left office.

  How did these companies achieve greater progress under more stringent conditions than the

  Neighbourhood Centre Associations? For us in the FCT Administration at the time, the lesson we