THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE MASTER PLAN FOR THE FEDERAL CAPITAL CITY, ABUJA: A Review of the problems of Development Control

By

Author

Presented To

Department of Environmental Design

ABSTRACT
This Thesis is an attempt to present information on the implementation of the New Federal Capital City, Abuja and also examine the problems faced in development control in the course of regulating, harmonizing and coordinating the implementation of the Plan for the New Federal Capital City. The idea of New Towns or Planning and relocating New Capitals is not new. Various reasons necessitated the change of the Federal Capital City of Nigeria from Lagos to Abuja. Amongst these reasons is that Lagos is no longer capable of shouldering the dual role of being the Federal Capital of Nigeria as well as that of the Lagos State. Above all, there was congestion traffic jam and lack of land for expansion. Therefore, it was necessary to move the capital to a new site so as to create a most attractive environment and to provide decent and healthy living conditions for all the city's residents. The study, therefore, examined the tools for implementing the Abuja Master Plan so as to achieve this objective. These tools include political, economic, administrative, social and legal. The legal component was singled out and this was used to evaluate the implementation of the New Federal Capital City, Abuja. The survey showed that the legal component, that is, Development Control which is supposed to coordinate the implementation of the plan for the Capital City is faced with many problems. Again these problems were classified under ii economic, administrative, social , politial and legal. The study showed that Development Control officials have not been able to harmonize, regulate and co-ordinate the implementation of the Plan for the Capital City as it is supposed to. A review of two Districts (Wuse I and Garki I) at the micro-level and macro-level showed the presence of a number of illegal developments and contraventions on building regulation. In some areas the Master Plan was altered thus leading to serious problems. The inability of the Federal Capital Development Authority to compensate the original settlers has also contributed to the numerous problems facing Development Control, a problem which made it difficult to implement the plan in those areas where the indigenes reside. Based on the findings a number of proposals were made which if taken into consideration can go a long way to make development control functional and effective enough to regulate harmonize and co-ordinate the implementation of the Plan for the New Federal Capital City so as to achieve the objective of the Federal Government, that is, to build a befitting city for Nigeria.