Amid the roar of traffic from a highway bridge towering above his crops, 42-year-old Bala Haruna, an Abuja farmer walks through rows of corn, cassava, and okra on his family’s farm, a rare green patch in Nigeria’s rapidly urbanizing capital.
A pump channels water from a nearby stream into hand-dug trenches crisscrossing the farmland, wedged tightly between busy four-lane roads. These fields, Haruna recalls, predate the nearby hotel, the grand national mosque, and even the high-rises that now define Abuja’s skyline.
“There were no buildings here,” Haruna said, recalling a childhood filled with the sounds of chirping birds and croaking frogs.Today, however, the small urban farms scattered across Abuja are symbolic of a larger struggle, one between nature and the city’s relentless development.
Despite regulations designating much of this land as protected green space, developers are steadily encroaching, bulldozing vegetation and flattening farmland to make way for concrete expansion. On the far side of the overpass, the contrast is stark: fertile soil gives way to scorched earth and rising temperatures where new construction projects have taken over.
Local farmers say the land was taken from them three years ago without proper documentation. Eight of them were given just ₦300,000 (about $190 today) to split, an amount eroded further by inflation.
According to the city’s original master plan, these lands are supposed to remain undeveloped, neither farms nor buildings are technically permitted. But enforcement is weak, and corruption is widespread, says Ismail Nuhu, an urban governance expert who studied Abuja’s planning system for his PhD.
“Politicians often exploit the master plan selectively,” Nuhu said. “They’ll say, ‘This isn’t supposed to be here,’ and use that to justify land grabs, even when the presidential villa itself isn’t where the plan intended.”
Federal Capital Territory Minister Nyesom Wike has vowed to uphold the 1970s-era master plan by building new roads and relocating settlements that obstruct its execution. Yet affected farmers say their complaints have been met with silence from FCT officials, including Wike’s office.
For Haruna and others, the fight continues, not just for land, but for the survival of a tradition that has endured in Abuja’s shadows for decades.
