Amid the growing concerns over the marginalisation of Abuja’s indigenous communities, the Network of Journalists on Indigenous Issues (NEJII), in collaboration with the Resource
Centre for Human Rights and Civic Education (CHRICED) and the MacArthur Foundation, has requested legislation safeguarding the economic, political and cultural rights of the Abuja Original Inhabitants (AOIs).
Making the demand to President Bola Tinubu and the National Assembly during a media briefing in Lagos ahead of the United Nations International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, observed annually on August 9, participants warned that decades of neglect of the indigenous communities in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) could threaten national cohesion if left unresolved.
NEJII Coordinator, Adewale Adeoye, said the Abuja First Nations, comprising eight indigenous ethnic nationalities, had suffered historical injustice since the creation of the FCT in 1976.
Stressing that only deliberate institutional reforms could address their grievances.
He urged the president to sponsor an Executive Bill reserving a percentage of the FCT’s annual budget for the education and healthcare of AOIs, while guaranteeing employment opportunities for qualified indigenous people in public institutions.
According to him, the proposed legislation should also provide legal protection for indigenous languages by making them part of the curriculum in primary and secondary schools across the FCT, while preserving ancestral worship sites, forests and other cultural heritage.
Adeoye described the plight of the indigenous communities as “a ticking time bomb,” warning that peaceful agitations should not be ignored in a country already grappling with insecurity, banditry and terrorism.
He also called for a judicial commission of inquiry to investigate alleged historical land seizures, forced displacement and inadequate compensation suffered by indigenous communities following the establishment of the nation’s capital.
The other recommendations included establishing an Abuja Indigenous Peoples Endowment Fund to finance education and cultural preservation, creating an Abuja Metropolitan Police with significant indigenous representation, and granting greater recognition of AOIs in the territory’s cultural identity.
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