Abuja

Abuja is the capital city of Nigeria. Nigeria is a country in West Africa.

Abuja is a new city. People planned it carefully before they built it.

Abuja is the capital of Nigeria, near the center of the country. It did not grow slowly from a village: it was planned on paper first and then built, starting in the early 1980s. It became the capital in 1991.

Official projections, based on the 2006 census, give about 1.7 million people for 2022 in the Abuja Municipal Area Council, the city's main council area, and about 3.1 million in the whole Federal Capital Territory around it.

Abuja is the seat of Nigeria's federal government and the center of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), an area of about 8,000 km² created for it and bordered by Kogi, Niger, Nasarawa and Kaduna states.

Population figures are uncertain. Nigeria's last census was in 2006, when the FCT counted 1,406,239 people and the Abuja Municipal Area Council 776,298. Official projections for 2022 give 3,067,500 for the FCT and 1,693,400 for the municipal council, assuming the same growth rate for every area of a state. City Population, which compiles these figures from Nigeria's National Population Commission and National Bureau of Statistics, warns that all Nigerian population figures carry high error rates.

A huge rock called Aso Rock rises at the edge of the city.

Not far away stand big buildings where the country's leaders and lawmakers work. One has a big green dome.

On the east side of central Abuja rises Aso Rock, a giant rock hill about 400 meters higher than the land around it. About 3 kilometers to its west is the Three Arms Zone, where the three branches of Nigeria's government have their buildings: the one that runs the country, the one that makes laws, and the courts.

The photo shows the National Assembly building, where the country's laws are made, with its large green dome and white walls.

Abuja's central area was designed by Kenzo Tange's firm with Urtec of Tokyo; the Federal Capital Development Authority approved its 'Central Area Urban Design' in 1981. It treats open spaces, landscaping and long views as closely linked, and names a sequence of spaces: the Three Arms Gardens and a green buffer zone in the Three Arms Zone, ministries' gardens, a National Mall, city squares and the green areas of a Cultural Zone.

The Three Arms Zone takes its name from the executive, legislative and judicial arms of the federal government, whose buildings stand there. The National Assembly stands about 3 km west-southwest of Aso Rock, a hill that Wikidata records as rising about 400 m above its surroundings. The National Assembly building, in the photo, has a green central dome with smaller green-roofed wings.

Abuja was built in parts, one after another.

A train runs from the city to the airport.

The master plan sets out Abuja's city on about 250 square kilometers, to be built in phases. Each neighborhood was planned for about 5,000 people, with shared facilities nearby, and groups of neighborhoods form districts with schools, hospitals and fire stations.

A light rail line links Abuja Station with the international airport, 26.7 kilometers away. It was opened on 12 July 2018, was soon suspended, and started running again on 29 May 2024.

The master plan develops the Federal Capital City in phases over about 250 km²; Phase I alone covers about 7,076 hectares. Its basic unit is a residential neighborhood for about 5,000 people with shared facilities; neighborhoods group into districts, each served by a district center with schools, hospitals and fire stations. Phase I, the best-served area, came under heavy pressure for land after the move of 1991.

UrbanRail.Net describes a regional light-rail network of about 78 km under construction since 2007. Its first stage, 26.7 km between the airport and Abuja Station, was inaugurated on 12 July 2018 with a free, limited service that was soon suspended; service was relaunched on 29 May 2024.

Abuja's planners saved land for parks, gardens and playgrounds.

Gardeners planted trees, bushes and flowers as the city was built.

Abuja's planners wanted a beautiful city with plenty of green space. In the first phase of the city, about 1,260 of 7,076 hectares were kept for parks, gardens, children's playgrounds, sports centers and green strips along valleys and riverbeds.

In the early 1980s a parks and gardens team planted trees, shrubs and flowers as the first neighborhoods went up, and the city's first public park was made in Garki District.

Ibrahim Usman Jibril's 2010 paper for the International Federation of Surveyors describes the founders' aim of 'a city-beautiful'. Of Phase I's roughly 7,076 hectares, about 1,260 were reserved for 'greens': open spaces, parks, gardens, playgrounds, outdoor games, sports centers, national and neighborhood parks, and green stretches along valleys, riverbeds and hills.

The paper also records the problems: as the city grew, many green areas were taken over and converted to other uses, and private operators given parks to run often put profit first. It describes the authorities' later efforts, from 2003, to clear such developments and restore the greens to their intended use.