SPECIAL REPORT: Ruga, 80-year-old rural Abuja community living in fear of bulldozer’s brutality

The Ruga settlement in the Katampe area of Abuja is the only home 55-year-old Zainab Saidu knows.

Ruga is a Hausa term for settlements predominantly inhabited by Fulani nomadic herders and their cattle.

Mrs Saidu’s parents were raised in the community long before then Head of State, Murtala Muhammed (an army general) proclaimed Abuja as Nigeria’s federal capital on 3 February 1976. The proclamation became a reality on 12 December 1991, when the then federal military government, led by Ibrahim Babangida, moved the country’s political capital from Lagos to the brand new city in the centre of the country. 

The Saidus raised cattle and tilled the land, which is now being used for the government’s housing expansion project. However, frequent visits by land developers in recent months have filled Mrs Saidu with a growing sense of foreboding that her time at the community is ending.

Zaniab Saidu

“The people are saying this land has been allocated to them by the government, and they want to use it,” she said.

Those years before she was born, Abuja was a vast Savannah grassland inhabited by indigenous ethnic groups. Mrs Saidu wondered if the years her community has occupied the land do not matter as the visitors claim.

“Our people have occupied this land for about eight decades,” she said defiantly.

Housing expansion in Abuja

Since becoming Nigeria’s federal capital, Abuja has experienced rapid urbanisation and population growth at the expense of the indigenous communities. Hundreds of informal settlements were destroyed in the last decades, and their inhabitants were forcefully evicted to give way to modern houses and structures that fit the master plan of the Federal Capital Development Authority (FCDA). As population growth pushes housing expansion, more settler communities, such as Mrs Saidu’s Ruga in the Katampe district of the Abuja Municipal Area Council (AMAC), are threatened.

Surrounded by developing estates and houses with contemporary designs, the inhabitants – about 70 Fulani herders and milk farmers – are being badgered to leave.

Ruga settlement in AMAC

Villagers who spoke to PREMIUM TIMES said they had received numerous orders in the last two years to vacate the area or specific plots of land.

“They claim to have bought the pieces of land and have papers to back this claim,” said the village head, Saidu Salihu.

Some others come sightseeing or to survey the village. However, Mr Salihu fears it is only a matter of time before they make the same demand.

Saidu Salihu, Ruga village head

They live every day anticipating the siege of bulldozers that have flattened the homes of many other indigenous people whose lands were allocated to new, wealthy owners in different parts of Abuja.

PREMIUM TIMES gathered that the landowners, often represented by agents, consider the presence of the settlers at the site as an obstacle to development.

Ruga settlers pestered

The administration of land in the FCT differs from that of other states in Nigeria. The territory is covered by the Federal Capital Territory Act, first promulgated in 1976 as a Military Decree No 6, giving the federal government control of all its land. The power of land allocation trickles from the president through the Ministry of FCT to the FCDA.

The area councils also allocated land in some areas until this power was withdrawn due to cases of multiple allocations of the same parcels of land.

PREMIUM TIMES learnt that the FCDA controls the land in the Katampe district and that the area occupied by the pastoralists was allocated by the agency more than a decade ago.

An estate development agent, Udoh Johnson, said landowners usually allowed villagers to remain on their land until they were ready to develop it.

“Now, the district is becoming more developed, and my client, who resides abroad, wants to develop his plot,” Mr Johnson, the CEO of J.N. Dunu and Associate, told PREMIUM TIMES.

The Ruga community has been shrinking as more landowners claim their land.

The first to be seized was a vast piece of land opposite the community, which the inhabitants used as farms. It is now occupied by a new development known as Paradise Estate. A few years later, 15 huts on the right end of the community were demolished to make way to construct a modern structure.

Adamu Garba, a 35-year-old cattle herder in the Ruga, said the owners were paid N1.2 million as compensation for the loss of the huts.

Adamu Garba

“We should not have accepted the compensation. We want to keep our homes but without the constant fear that we would be thrown out any time,” Mr Garba said in Hausa.

He said the villagers had since been rejecting offers of compensation.

No more access to school, healthcare

For Mrs Saidu, eviction would cost her more than her home. It would cut her access to medical care at the Maitama General Hospital, and her seven children would quit school. She said she would also no longer be able to attend the nearby market where she hawks cheese and fresh milk.

“Whenever these people (land developers) appear, my heart sinks. I know what they want. They see us as illiterates without rights. Where do we go if we leave?” she said, her hands clasped and pressed tightly to her chest.

“We lived here and paid taxes from the colonial era. That should count for something,” Mrs Saidu exclaimed after a pause like one having an epiphany.

Ishaq Haruna, who listened as Mrs Saidu spoke to the reporter, brought out three paper receipts. One of the receipts bears the date of 1968. He said the papers were evidence of tax payment.

The receipts presented to PREMIUM TIMES

However, PREMIUM TIMES noticed that the taxes were on cattle. Historically, pastoralists were required to pay taxes on their cattle as part of the government’s effort to generate revenue and regulate livestock management.

Land Use Act

However, Illmi Children’s Fund (ICF), a non-profit advocating for the settlers, insists that the receipts prove that the community existed before the enactment of the 1978 Land Use Act, making the residents legal occupants of the area.

The Land Use Act stipulates that communities existing on a parcel of land before the establishment of the Act automatically have the right of ownership.

Based on this Act, Henry Abdulsamad, the ICF programme officer, said the Ruga community members are legal landowners.

“This community has been here for at least 80 years. This is why we are backing their right on this matter,” Mr Abdulsamad said.

“They have not enjoyed any government support or development whatsoever, and now they are at risk of a forceful eviction.”

However, a property rights specialist, Kazeem Oyinwola, who spoke to PREMIUM TIMES, said the Land Use Act does not apply to the federal capital territory.

Section 36(2) of the Act recognises the customary rights of land, but section 49 states that the provisions of the Act exclude the FCT as the territory is under the federal government.

“Nothing in this Act shall affect any title to land, whether developed or undeveloped, held by the Federal Government or any agency of the Federal Government at the commencement of this Act or acquired by the Federal Government after the commencement of this Act,” the legal provision states.

Mr Kazeem said the territory is guided by the FCT Act, established in 1976, two years before the Land Use Act.

He noted that section 6 of the FCT Act provides for compensation to land owners affected by the FCT’s creation within a particular timeframe that has since elapsed.

‘They are not the victims, we are’ PREMIUM TIMES could not reach the people laying claims to the land. However, our reporter contacted some of their agents.

Those who spoke to PREMIUM TIMES stressed that the FCDA has allocated the land.

“They are not the victims here, we are the victims,” Mr Johnson said.

He said he was engaged to develop a plot of 2,000 square metres but could not work because the community mosque, school and a few huts sit on about 30 per cent of the plot.

The agent said he had made multiple attempts to enter an agreement with the villagers to allow him to begin his work, but the attempts were rebuffed.

Ruga community school and mosque

“I have been discussing this with them for over two years now. They can’t prevent owners from using their land,” an exasperated Mr Johnson said.

He urged the FCDA to relocate the villagers.

Abdullahi Jahi, another agent, agreed with Mr Johnson.

“I think they want a place in the district and within urban development,” Mr Jani said.

“But they need to find a new area to settle soon, especially before other landowners come to claim their property. They cannot remain here permanently,” he said.

Indigenous inhabitants ‘compensated’ – Official

When PREMIUM TIMES contacted the spokesperson for the Abuja Geographic Information System (AGIS), Segun Kayode, he said the federal government compensated the inhabitants when it acquired the FCT.

He said the government paid and relocated the original inhabitants of the land.

“Most of them have been compensated. Every land in Abuja belongs to the government. The government acquired all the land before they were allocated,” Mr Kayode said.

However, he said many refused to vacate the land despite getting government compensation. In some cases, he said, they try to extort money from the allottees.

“It is just that they don’t want to leave. That’s the problem. After collecting government compensation, some will also want to collect money from the person to whom the land has been allocated,” Mr Kayode noted.

But contrary to the official’s claim, the Nigerian government has yet to compensate and relocate many of the indigenous people whose land was taken over by the government in 1976 ahead of the eventual relocation of Nigeria’s federal capital there in 1991.

In recognition of this, the House of Representatives in 2017 resolved to probe the botched compensation agreement made by the federal government and the indigenous tribe.

Five years later, a member of the House proposed a bill to create the Federal Capital Territory Compensation, Resettlement and Welfare Board to resolve the lingering problems with the compensation and resettlement policy of the government.

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The sponsor of the bill, Gaza Gbefwi, the lawmaker representing Kari/Keffi/Kokona Federal Constituency of Nasarawa State at the time, said the authorities had yet to compensate every deserving indigenous community affected by the development-induced displacement due to corruption, poor funding and the lack of involvement of the natives in the process.

He said the resettlement policy had yet to yield any tangible result despite past efforts.

These efforts have not allayed the fears of Mrs Saidu, who faces the prospect of being evicted without receiving adequate compensation and resettlement by the government.

They have also not met the aspirations of other indigenous people already living the reality that Mrs Saidu and her Ruga community fear.