WATCHING the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, Senator Bala Mohammed, at a recent interactive session with some journalists, to explain the policies, programmes, achievements and challenges of his administration, the occasion threw up some dramatic yet splendid and reassuring moments.

Talking about drama, one is reminded of the misadventure of the rather egocentric reporter who had so preposterously remarked that the minister had not done anything to promote industry, only to look pitiable when the minister established, to the conviction of all present, that much had been achieved! In other words, the reporter was either mischievous or ignorant. Either way, that would be considered by any right thinking person as unfortunate.

Nonetheless, the misplaced question did not deter the minister whose decorum all through the interaction was undergirded by disarming candour and spell-binding insight laced with enormous respect for his professional colleagues. The minister was to re-enact the same mien and delivery at another forum. Oh! By the way, not many know that Bala started out as a journalist in Jos, Plateau State. Well, he jumped ship and picked up a job with the civil service. Lucky guy! He saw tomorrow. But it wasn’t all by happenstance. His distinguished civil service career was punctuated by appointments as special assistant, first to the Minister of Interior (late Alex Ibru) and later, Minister of Aviation (Isa Yuguda, now Governor of Bauchi State). That was before he was elected to the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

I am forced to give this background because of the tremendous impact it has had on the minister’s approach to national issues and the challenge of administering the Federal Capital Territory. To start with, equipped with such a rich and varied background, it is no surprise that, under him, the FCT has recorded steady progress.

For another, given that the minister subscribes wholly to the civil service culture of loyalty in service, one should not be surprised about his unquestionable loyalty to President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, though it needs be emphasized that this is, in part, attributable to his principled insistence on the cardinal principle of equity, fairness and justice.

From his responses at the meeting with journalists, you could discern a man with a deep knowledge of his charge, a politician driven by a consuming passion to drive the transformation agenda of President Goodluck Jonathan to its logical conclusion; someone who, in spite of the high office he now occupies, has not lost sight of his own humble background in the backwaters of Abuja and therefore naturally empathizes with civil servants; a nationalist who, in spite of the endemic nepotism of our political environment, maintains that the federal capital territory is for every Nigerian.

Of his many sobering and heart-warming responses, none was as reassuring as his emphasis on social infrastructure aimed at the lower strata of the society. His thoughts on this evolved as he explained away the mass housing program of his administration, the massive road construction works, the Abuja mass transit buses and why he ensured that the $500 million Chinese loan to facilitate the completion of the Abuja Light Rail project was secured.

He reminded his media colleagues: “Don’t forget that I started like most of them in the lower rungs of the civil service. I lived in the outskirts of the city centre and experienced what it means to live in shanties and the nightmare of commuting to and from work, far away from the city centre”. The problem, he explained, reels of callous indifference: over the years, top private and public sector executives made housing plans for themselves without any provision for drivers, gardeners, stewards, etc.

He insists that his administration is determined to reverse the trend as a way of alleviating the plight of the people in line with President Jonathan’s transformation agenda. To this end, his preoccupation has been to provide infrastructure as a catalyst for development of mass housing in the districts and satellite towns.

Not done, Senator Mohammed also insists that under the evolving dispensation city planners and property developers have a moral duty to device ways of integrating indigenous elements into modern housing plans instead of hounding them out through various disputed payoffs and troublesome resettlement arrangements.

In other words, modern cities being planned under a creative arrangement known as the Land Swap Model (of the Private Public Partnership) will make provision, among other options, for the original settlers to be part of the new cities. Ten districts have been earmarked for this purpose in a massive operation that promises to instantly transform the Abuja landscape into a study in human habitat development.

Human habitat

In a country where political office-holders elevate showmanship to the stature of an art, where impunity is deployed in a democratic setting to hoodwink the people into believing that all motions lead to movements, it is surprising that Bala Mohammed is able to achieve the goals of the FCT Administration without the familiar cacophony of noises of the past.

That explains the absence of fanfare even as his administration insists with adherence to the Abuja master plan; that is why the sustained skills acquisition, empowerment and rehabilitation of beggars, street traders and commercial sex workers is treated as a humane governmental responsibility and not a political tool. To draw the point home, Senator Mohammed reminds anyone who cares to listen that these Nigerians flock to Abuja in search of greener pastures only as a last resort. To him therefore, “they should be treated with compassion even as we insist on applying the rules”.

Let’s we forget, when consummated, the Land Swap Model will stand out as a creative breakthrough in public private partnership. Its major advantage is that by guaranteeing the provision of infrastructure in virgin areas, new cities would spring up without any financial demand on government.

The savings will then be applied to other pressing needs of the people. I have no doubt that many, like me, cannot wait for the day this will be completed. But how long will that take? Or will the project suffer the fate of other public projects: bogged down by bureaucratic inertia, political interests and elite mischief?

Here is the good news. First, the project has received the endorsement of the president’s economic team. Second, high net-worth property investors have signified definite interest in the project. Among these are Dangote Group, Rosehill Group, China Railway Construction Company, System Properties Development Consortium Limited, Edimo Group of Italy and Afri-International Projects and Consulting Ltd. Third, a cross-section of enlightened professionals and technocrats has applauded the programme implementation for its transparency and practicability.

At the recent stakeholder forum on the model Mansur Ahmed, director general of Nigeria’s Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Agency, ICRA, Mustapha Bello, CEO of the Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission, NIPC, and Dr. Shamsudeen Usman, minister of national planning, all applauded it not only as an out of the box extra-budgetary relief but a catalyst for the huge employment and supply window which, in their view, paves way for achieving the human development component of President Jonathan’s agenda.

Thus, barring unforeseen hitches, Senator Mohammed’s determination of actualizing President Jonathan’s dream of transforming Abuja into one of the world’s first five cities by the year 2020 is well on course.

Light rail project

Does that sound fictional? Think of Abuja with the light rail project being operational by 2013; imagine a capital city with the prestigious $1.2 billion World Trade Centre (already under construction by no less a company than the Churchgate Group), take a mental lip into the $2.6 billion Abuja Downtown Centre which agreement has been signed with the Balkan Group of billionaire American investor Jim Phillips.

Think about a sprawling metropolis traversed and served by a meshwork of elaborately constructed roads as is the case in Abuja today. Have you seen the Abuja airport road of late? It reminds one of any of the motorways in the United States. If that is a sign of the dream city that President Jonathan plans to bequeath to Nigerians, he would have blessed the memory of his predecessors who initiated many of the projects as part of the Abuja master plan.

•Agu, former Editor in chief of Champion newspapers writes from Lagos