ABSTRACT
This essay focuses on the housing deficit for the people of middle and low income earners residing in Abuja, the new Federal Capital of Nigeria. It traces the causes of lack of affordable housing for the majority of the inhabitants of the city and the path of housing development envisioned by Nigerian political leaders and bureaucrats in the immediate post-colonial era. It is observed that housing development in Nigeria, especially in the previous capital, Lagos, was an elite boosting experience rather than a social necessity. Regardless of unique governmental rhetoric to build a new capital city to properly house Nigerians, elitist agenda historically took over most housing projects in Nigeria, and subsequently government efforts to tackle lack of housing consistently fell short of intentions. In examining the design of the master plan of Abuja and the "social concept" envisioned in it, clear and palpable intentions meant to embody social distinctions between haves and have-nots become apparent. The way in which the territory was planned illustrates the uneven distributive powers that promote inclusion and exclusion mechanisms which yield visibility and invisibility paradoxes. The inability for masses of lower-income people to afford available housing has excluded them from the center, but the establishment of informal, unplanned peripheral settlements highlights their presence and relationship to the elite classes. The title rises from this reality: political imagination of the city beautification project is a vision in which the poor are not seen; conversely, social hierarchies and stratification are maintained. The wealthy class's dependence on the lower and working classes naturally generates informal settlement development. This paper will examine various methods in which Abuja's master plan, policies and modernist urban planning have acted to maintain political and social inequality through spatial delineation and marginalization.
