Although for the people working in Abuja’s city centre in search of affordable accommodation in the satellite towns, Zuba is not a veritable option. Yet it is teeming with migrants. Presently, the migrants have overshadowed the native Koro people whose shanty houses are mushroomed between pseudo-modernised ones built by the migrants.
Three factors make this town bustle. There is the Zuba International Vehicle Spare Parts Market; this market is the cause of the teeming Igbo population in the town. They travel to South-Eastern part of the country, as well as outside the country, to buy spare parts to resell in the market, which is built on an expansive land adjacent FCT College of Education which is located in the town. It is widely believed that after the spare parts market in Kaduna, Zuba’s is the biggest as all the states in the North-Central sub-region and even beyond rely on it.
Secondly, there is the fruit market. The fruit market, like the spare parts market for the Igbo population, is behind the teeming Hausa migrants. They live in the town to receive supplies from fruits-producing states in the far-north, and even from neighbouring countries, to trade at the market, which is said to provide about 80 percent of the fruits consumed in the South.
The market is also said to be the highest source of revenue for Gwagwalada Area Council.
Finally, motor park work thrives in the town. Most of its youth are unemployed, even as a large number of them are armed with SSCE or NCE certificates, hence work at the various bus stations in the town to eke out a living. What people don’t know is that there is a lot of money in the business. Usman Musa who works at Dankogi Park where passengers board vehicles to Kaduna, Zaria, Kano, Minna and other northern cities, told our correspondent that he earns an average of N3,000 within the three hours slot that he has to call passengers for vehicles daily.
According to him, he earns the average of N10,000 in the same slot in festive periods, “and that makes me satisfied like a civil servant. In fact, most civil servants can’t tell me anything in terms of doing well.”
Although the venture is populated by the unemployed Koro youth, their counterparts from other parts of the country are gradually joining the fray, thereby giving the town another feature.
But beside all these, Zuba is mired in gross under-development. It exists as if it is not part of Gwagwalada Area Council. The sorts of amenities that Dobi and Gwagwalada enjoy do not exist in the town.
A trek through the town would reveals that the residents have been living on the grace of God otherwise they would have long ago been displaced by flood. The areas called Minister’s Hill, Area One and Apiaboroki are a time bomb. The houses, that can easily pass for goat stables, are packed around a slanting hill with no space for waterways. Even a small amount of rainfall leaves the houses on the base of the hill lodged in water.
In the same vein, sanitation is a rarity in the town. Dirts strewn everywhere and opened gutters snake from one house to the other, making the environments fly-infested.
Most houses don’t have toilets and the children excrete anyhow, polluting the air with dangerous smell. The few houses that have toilets; the toilets are decrepit and are not well-maintained. Some residents even use sheets of zinc as a slab for soak aways.
“If not for the will of God, dirts in this town would have sent all of us to the grave. There is no sanity in Zuba at all,” a health worker, Madam Jumai lamented.
Another feature of the town is lack of roads. From Area One junction to T-junction, the road is tarred and good but from T-junction to Ikwa, it is untarred and muddy. After rainfalls, it becomes unpliable for vehicles because the mud gets them stuck. The council authority had started repairing it, but stopped without telling why.
Beside the roads, healthcare services are very expensive. It is dotted with private hospitals, and the only government one is mostly dormant because of lack of staff and equipments.
Treating ordinary fever costs close to N6,000 at the private hospitals whereby at government’s, it barely costs a thousand naira.
A female resident who pleaded for anonymity, lamented that “the situation is causing a lot of troubles for us. If you don’t have money to go to private hospitals, so you will suffer and maybe even die. The government hospital is not working. If you go there, you will see only the gateman; no doctor and no nurses. The government needs to do something about it.”
Power supply is also a rare commodity in the town. Kabiru Jibrin who has been living in the town since 2007 said: “I have never seen a town in perpetual darkness like Zuba. Some parts of the town spend over six months without seeing light.”
According to Kabir, “the situation is a real threat to the economic life of the town.”
He said, ” many businesses rely on light, and where there is no light you use generator; you are to fuel and service the generator. Isn’t that an extra cost which will tell on the people?”
However, speaking about the situation, Alhaji Musa Iya, a non-partisan politician in the town, said: “Zuba is backward because the Gwaris that normally emerge as Chairmen in the area council concern themselves with developing only their communities.”
He said, “we are Koro and the Gwari chairmen have not been caring about us. For us to be emancipated, we need a Koro chairman. Once we have that, I assure you that there will be development in the town.”
Iya, however, warned the officials to stop polarising the council based on tribe, “because doing that does not reflect democracy. Koro voted for you, Gwari voted for you, but because you are Gwari, you have forgotten that Koro people voted for you too, and now all you do is to develop only your people. It is bad. It is undemocratic.”
But in his response, the Secretary of the council, Yahaya Usman, said the people “are misinterpreting the realities on the ground.”
Yahaya said, despite the fact that the council has been having paucity of funds, the Abubakar Jibrin Giri-led administration has been doing everything possible to carry everybody along irrespective of tribe or religion.
He said very soon, Zuba would witness a significant development as the council had concluded plans to renovate the fruit market and repair some of the township roads.
