Gbagalape is a growing community in Abuja, Nigeria’s Federal Capital Territory. But while other communities are moving forward, conquering diseases and wants, time and distance, Gbagalape is wallowing deeper in misery. Experiences long forgotten in other satellite towns of Abuja are on rampage in Gbagalape. Ironically, Gbagalape is situated few kilometers away from Asokoro, a “paradise” where the noveau riche and the ruling class in Abuja live.
Gbagalape and Asokoro are diametrically opposite. However, the agony of Gbagalape is not self-inflicted. It is a testimony of the perceived government’s insensitivity to the plight of its citizens. It’s a place where an average Nigerian with a dissent taste of lifestyle would loathe to reside. Penury and the need to eke out a living from their places of work have, however, forced most civil servants to live in the village.
The entrance into and exit points from the community are those with disturbing and painful experiences. A first time visitor to the community would not pray to repeat such visit because of the deplorable state of roads there. There are only two known major roads that lead into and out of the community. These are the popular MOPOL and checkpoint junctions along the Keffi/Abuja road. Whichever one you choose to follow to the community remains a nightmare. There are no good, passable and motorable roads into the community. You are left with the trouble of meandering through the rough waterlogged and slippery parts to get to the place.
Driving through Gbagalape during the dry season is quite an experience. The portholes are deep and the stretch of road without these gullies, belch dust which in turn blinds the other motorists behind. Densely populated by over half a million residents, Gbagalape is begging for rehabilitation.
Daily Sun watched with dismay, how residents, including those working with the civil service, corporate companies, private business persons and school children, struggled to surmount the difficulties of ascending and descending the major roads leading in and out of the community, which composes red soil. The hills on both ends are steep while the valley in the middle is heavily eroded. Some residents who spoke with Daily Sun on the state of the roads said they depict the kind of poverty that exist amongst the low income class in the country, stressing that if they had better choice they would not have chosen to stay there. During the rush hours of the morning and at night, they try with so much difficulty to access the roads.
Hardly known in the 90’s, Gbagalape was a community with few settlers, largely of the Gbagi stock. However, in the late 1990s, people of the Tiv extraction from Benue State also moved in to occupy a large portion of the community, where they presently live together. Their presence began to attract people from other tribes
A Tiv businessman resident in that community, Emmanuel Ubebe, from Vandikya Local Government, Benue State, explained how the Tiv people settled there. According to him, it is customary in the North for people from the same tribe to locate and acquire a place in any state where they find themselves in a large population in order to live together and pursue a common interest. He said the then leader of the Tiv people in Nyanya, Chief Michael Ashiekaa, had approached the Chief of Gbagalape, who obliged his request for plots of land. He then moved in to live there with his people. This made the Tiv people the second most populated tribe there presently after the Gbagis, who are the indigenes.
He said in 2005, the population of the place began to explode up to its present strength. He said this followed the demolition exercise by the erstwhile Minister of the FCT, Mallam Nasir Ahmed el-Rufai. Those whose houses were demolished in other parts of the territory moved en masse to settle in the community.
Although the place is a ward under the Abuja Municipal Area Council (AMAC) of the FCT Administration. While the council administration is busy selling plots of land in view of its present attractive value, nothing has been done so far in terms of infrastructural development in the past 11 years.
The problem of good roads notwithstanding, there are no traces of electricity, water, security and other essential amenities that would have made the lives of the people worth living in that community.
Residents disclosed that politicians find their ways into the community on electioneering campaign with all manner of promises seeking their support to be elected into the various political offices but that none of them had ever returned to solve the developmental problems of the community that supported them into offices.
From: UBONG UKPONG.
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