Nigeria’s capital faces a 400-metre monolith called Aso Rock
Abuja sits at Nigeria’s geographic middle inside the Federal Capital Territory, purpose-built as national seat. Aso Rock, a 400-metre erosion remnant, anchors the skyline; presidency, assembly and court spread south of it. The 2006 census counted about 776,298 residents in the city proper.
From independence onward, Nigerian leaders wanted a capital that no single ethnic or religious bloc could claim, placed within reach of every region, and in the early 1970s they settled on the country's center. Lagos, meanwhile, had grown so crowded and squalid that moving government inland also promised to spread economic growth, much as Brazil had reasoned with Brasília. Decree No. 6 of 4 February 1976, issued under the military governments of Murtala Mohammed and Olusegun Obasanjo, set the move in motion. The name itself had earlier belonged to the nearby town now called Suleja.
The relocation was bitterly fought. Obafemi Awolowo, speaking for Yoruba interests, promised during his presidential campaign to hand the site to Walt Disney as an amusement park. The winner, Shehu Shagari, instead laid the city's foundations in 1979 and made the building site his first trip outside Lagos. The American-led consortium International Planning Associates, commissioned in 1977, delivered the master plan in February 1979, while Japanese architect Kenzo Tange designed the monumental core and business district. Economic and political turmoil slowed work, and Abuja formally took over from Lagos on 12 December 1991.
The city spreads in concentric phases outward from the foot of Aso Rock, each ringed by an expressway, with the airport area and university campus in Phase 5 more than 40 kilometers west. Asokoro, which contains the presidential palace, cabinet ministers' homes and most diplomats, is the most secure district, and the Central District holds the Three Arms Zone for the executive, legislature and judiciary. North of town the 725-meter Zuma Rock rises beside the Kaduna road.
Growth has been explosive: the United Nations reckoned Abuja expanded 139.7 percent between 2000 and 2010, the fastest of any city on Earth. It hosts the ECOWAS headquarters and OPEC's regional office, staged the 2003 Commonwealth summit and the 2014 African World Economic Forum, and joined UNESCO's learning cities network in 2016. Squatter settlements have mushroomed too, and demolitions since 2003 have evicted tens of thousands of residents.
Source: Abuja
