Government Policy on The Creation of The Federal Capital Territory- An Impact Assessment 1976-1996

ABSTRACT

This study is mainly concerned with examination of the role of government's policy on the creation of Abuja as the Federal Capital of Nigeria. Generally speaking, we examined the philosophy that governed the policy for the development of Abuja. Creating new towns and especially capital cities is not new in history. f n fact, quite a number of countries in the world have had cause to change their capital cities. Be that as it may, the research had essentially focused at investigating the reaction of the inhabitants t the implementation of the resttlement and compensation pol icy. T nitial ly, the policy was that the whole of the local population would be resettled outside the territory. With time, this policy was changed, and resettlement became limited to only those areas affected by physical development of the city. On the compensation issue, the exercise was full of fraud, to say the least. We conducted the research by gathering both primary and secondary data on the variables identified. For example, the evaluation of the resttlement pol icy was worked out through the analysis of some responses that served as ind icators of satisfaction or not, through the use structured and unstructured questions. Our findings revealed that right from the beginning of the programme of the development of the new Fedral Capital Territory, the inhabitants had h igh expectation and anxieties about the decision to resttle them, and perhaps with adequate compensation. In any case, both those resettled outside the FCT and those within were discontented with the levels of social services provided. In the final analysis, th is study