Take another look at the two pictures above. The one on the left is that of a residential building in Damangaza Village while the one on the right is another residential building in Wuse II, one of the high brow districts of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
While the picture on the left depicts squalor and dirt, the one on the right is well built with well trimmed flowers, just the way it should be.
The paradox of the two is that both are existing realities in one city.
Visiting the FCT for the first time, as you approach the City Gate along the Airport Road, the beautiful scenery that meets the eye leaves you in awe.
The beauty you see is reflective of a city regarded as one of the fastest growing in Africa.
Abuja is a fast growing city with a massive land area of over 8,000 square kilometres. With most of the major roads in the city centre adorned with complete street lights, Abuja is a beauty to behold at night.
Its highbrow residential areas, such as Maitama, where you have the ministers’ Hill,? Asokoro, where a large majority of state government lodges are found and Wuse II which is made popular by offices of corporate organisations and business plazas as well as an array of restaurants, night clubs and? several drinking pubs.
In the three arms zone, near Aso Rock is the Millennium Park, the largest outdoor relaxation spot in the city where friends, families and loved ones meet for picnics and other social functions.
This is apart from several other landmarks and exotic places in the metropolis that show evidence of what it takes to call a city glamorous.
It would not be out of place to say that behind this glamorous city, which consists of a central business district and posh houses in high-status districts, there are some areas that could be described as eyesore, where a majority of the people who work and do business in Abuja city centre dwell.
A visit to these areas shows the absence of basic social amenities, which leaves you in doubt as to if these areas really exist in the FCT.
It is clear that many Nigerians living outside the FCT regard Abuja as a city where the streets are paved with gold and where everything you touch turns into gold the moment you enter the city, but they are always disappointed when they experience the other side of Abuja.
Indeed, a first time visitor to the city could be easily fooled by the well-tarred roads leading from the airport to the city centre.
For Uche Ogbonna, a Civil Servant that lives in Gbazango axis at Kubwa Village, near the market, the first time he came to Abuja, he was very happy because of the beauty he beheld while entering the city from the city gate at Airport Road and he was full of hopes that he had finally entered his promised land. But when they got to the place that was to be his residential area, Kubwa Village, he was disappointed and continues to feel the same way each time he comes out in the morning to go to work.
“The beauty of the city is really deceptive as you will think that Abuja is generally beautiful when you enter the city from the city gate.? That was what I felt the first day I came to Abuja. I thought the way the houses and the roads were beautiful, so it was in every part of Abuja. I was so disappointed when I arrived here in Gbazango to know that this is the place I will be staying.? God, this place is something else.
“When my friends in Aba ask me where I stay in Abuja, I refuse to tell them, because this place is an eyesore.? The way people throw dirty things on the small roads we have here in Gbazango, and they just throw rubbish like rotten tomatoes, fish and meat water any where they like, the smell alone that comes from these rubbish can make you fall sick, and also the mosquitoes that the dirty water generates can give you malaria,” he said.
When LEADERSHIP visited some satellite towns, poverty, pains and hardship were boldly seen written on the faces of many residents, as most of them have lost hope of better living standards and resolved to the condemnation to life in Abuja’s slums which is complete with heaps of rubbish, fetid smells and blocked drains.
At Dutse Alhaji, a community that also needs the touch of government, because of the dismal state of the environment, Mrs. Christiana, a caterer said that life is unbearable in the undeveloped areas in the suburbs of the capital city.? She said that the residents do not have a choice but to live in the place they find themselves because of the high cost of accommodation in developed and well managed areas of the city.
She said, “It is very painful when one goes to the city, and beholds the beauty of the environment, decent houses and tarred roads which give deceitful impression to visitors that Abuja is a place of complete beauty. Each time I go to the city centre to make supplies, I feel depressed when I remember where I reside in Abuja.”