By Dodoh Okafor
They left their villages in search of the good life Abuja promises. They are of all ages, sexes, tribes and religious affiliations – united only by one restraint: a lack of means to rent a decent apartment.
Abuja has changed greatly in the last 30 years. Yes, the city still retains a certain measure of its old appeal but many are of the view that a whole lot has changed since the days of IBB and Sani Abacha as heads of state. As Abuja’s population explodes, currently said to be in the neighbourhood of 5 million, social problems that require urgent attention multiply.
Crime of various sorts is becoming a more regular occurrence in the city; waste disposal is a Herculean task; infrastructure is becoming inadequate andmore and more people now have their addresses under bridges, inside abandoned cars, in front of worship centres or schools and for some, inside their own cars, parked beside hotels with swimming pools.
In this story, we shall look at the problem of homelessness in Abuja, the psychological trauma it creates for those affected, and suggest a few steps authorities may consider taking in tackling a social menace in Nigeria’s capital city.
So, what is homelessness? By definition, a homeless person is anyone without a decent accommodation. They could be people living on the streets, moving from shelter to shelter or living in buildings where private bathrooms and essential amenities are lacking.
In Abuja, we find these categories of homeless persons. Here, you find labourers who left their home states in northern, southern, eastern and western Nigeria to come to the big city in search of a better life. They come as bricklayers, masons, carpenters, and unclassified labourers. They troop into the city with whatever little money they can put together from their homes and jump into any available night bus, goods-hauling trailers and whatever means is available to them and relocate to Abuja. With no one to receive them or money to interface with Abuja’s property agents, they make do with abandoned vehicles at car parks, find their ways to churches and mosques where they find scores of people like them, find a place under the many ubiquitous flyovers in Abuja or take over an abandoned stall or warehouse.
Like all men in real discomfort, they don’t need too much. They need a place to lay their head at night if they make it “home.” They ease themselves in surrounding bushes or use a public toilet where they exist. To them, comfort is meaningless, and survival is utmost. Every morning when they wake up, they go to wherever they can find construction jobs and when they cannot find any, they become bus conductors, they rent cart and become refuse disposal agents, while for others, they find their way to any of the big markets in town, rent a wheelbarrow and help in wheeling good for shoppers. A good number of them also work as street hawkers, errand boys in homes inside the urban centres and sometimes – as guards in companies or offices.
Now to be clear, Abuja’s homeless population does not just comprise of those who landed in the city in trucks conveying animals and vegetables into the city. A good number came in their own cars; some used regular transport lines while others previously lived in decent apartments before things turned and they found themselves pushed into the streets. Here you find youth corps members, fresh graduates who just landed in the city, young men and women who lost their jobs and have been unable to find new ones and, of course, those whose jobs cannot be able to afford any form of decent accommodation in the city.
For starters, accommodation is very expensive in the city. A studio apartment (1 room self-contained) in Abuja’s capital city – Wuse, Maitama, Asokoro, Jabi, Garki – can go for as high as N1-million per annum- depending on furnishing and facilities available. In the satellite towns like Kubwa, Galadima, Dutse, Lugbe, Karu and other places, one may be asked to cough out as much as N400 000for small space with bedroom, kitchen and bathroom. As you move away from the main city, the price keeps going down,but you may be hard pressed to find a self-contained home that goes for less than N150 000 in any part of Abuja.
Now considering that many Abuja employers pay their staff N30 000per month and this covers transport and rent, how possible is it for any beginner to find a decent accommodation in any part of Abuja considering the fall in the value of the Naira and its limited purchasing power. Interestingly, many have taken to odd, undignified jobs to be able to meet with the demands of Abuja life including rent but as many are beginning to find out, even those undignified jobs now come at so great a risk that many are quietly walking away from them. The Abuja situation is not helped by the situation in the states where hunger and hardship are driving people nuts. A lot of people- even when jobless and homeless in Abuja- would rather remain under the bridge and live in the hope that one day, their luck would shine than return to their home state and throw away whatever prospect of a better life they had.
We must also point to a difference between the first category of unemployed and the latter. While the illiterates and the unskilled labourers make do with garages and under bridges, the educated guys carry their cross slightly differently. Rather than launch straight into the streets, they prefer to hang around hotels with swimming pools, sleep in their cars which function as their homes and offices and as many who live in the city have observed- move from one friend’s house to the next, hoping that things sort themselves out quickly.
Like the homeless everywhere, Abuja’s homeless population are largely traumatised, feeling insecure and predisposed to violence and bouts of suicide. One needs to have a heart of stone not to be touched at the sight of nursing mothers with their infant children sitting or lying down on walkways around Wuse, Maitama and even in the suburbs. Most times you find them begging for alms or eating whatever food may have been offered them by good Samaritans. The mere sight of these women and their infant children often invoke sympathy from passers-by and drivers who once in a while drop something for them- not many are however moved to seek an enduring solution to their plight- jobs and shelter.
It is believed that so many of these homeless persons take to criminality and other forms of illegal dealings to survive. They are accused of polluting the city with their waste, constituting a nuisance, and making it hard for the government and her agencies to plan.
Many had opined that those who do not have a veritable means of livelihood have no business in the city. Some have also advised that those whose means of livelihood cannot support Abuja’s expensive lifestyle should consider other locations. Another group have also suggested Abuja was not really built for the poor and those whose income falls below a certain threshold should look for settlements in some other cities in Nigeria.
While these are valid suggestions, we must also bear in mind that these people are Nigerians who are entitled to live in anywhere of Nigeria as enshrined in the constitution. The government mustcater for the welfare of the people – including shelter, create the right environment for investors to step in,create employment and launch social welfare programs to provide some forms of decent employment for Nigerians. NGOs, members of the organised private sector, media houses and charitable individuals must step in to find an enduring solution to the rising menace of homelessness in Abuja.
No citizen of the country should be abandoned to the elements. The right to dignified living should be guaranteed for every Nigerian.