Wike and the Abuja Master Plan, by Alabidun Shuaib AbdulRahman 

Last week, I wrote about the danger of Abuja gradually drifting towards the urban failures that have made Jakarta synonymous with flooding, poor drainage, disappearing waterways and the painful consequences of allowing development to outrun planning. The argument was not that Abuja is Jakarta. It was that cities, despite differences in geography, can repeat one another’s mistakes.

Events in Nepal this week have supplied an even more sobering reason for Abuja and Nigeria to take that warning seriously. What happened in Nepal on Wednesday, August 26, 2026, was not an ordinary rainy-season flood. A section of a glacier near Langtang Lirung in the Himalayas collapsed, sending an enormous mass of ice and rock crashing into the Lhende Khola river. The resulting torrent became a deadly mixture of water, mud, rock and debris that raced through valleys and settlements on the Nepal-China border. Reuters reported that the disaster destroyed roads, bridges, houses, power installations and the vital Gyirong border infrastructure, while hundreds were killed and nearly 1,000 people remained missing.

By Friday, August 28, the situation had become even more frightening. A lake created when debris blocked the river had begun overflowing, forcing rescue operations to be suspended because of the danger of another surge. Nepalese and Chinese authorities were already warning of further flooding.

The immediate lesson is not that Abuja has glaciers. It does not. Neither should anyone suggest that a Himalayan glacial collapse can simply be transplanted into Nigeria. The lesson is more fundamental and much closer to home: disasters become catastrophic when natural hazards meet vulnerable settlements, weak planning, inadequate infrastructure and institutions that respond after the damage instead of preparing before it.

Nepal has always been vulnerable to floods, landslides and other natural disasters. Its mountainous terrain makes communities particularly exposed during heavy rainfall. In September 2024, devastating rains killed at least 192 people across the country, with 56 deaths recorded in the Kathmandu Valley alone. At the time, poor urban planning and climate change are said to be the factors that worsened the flooding.

The current disaster has a different immediate trigger, but the wider warning remains the same. Scientists say climate change is increasingly destabilising high mountain environments by changing patterns of ice melt, freezing and thawing. Nepal has lost nearly one-third of its glacier ice over about three decades, according to figures cited by Reuters, while warming conditions are making compound disasters involving floods, landslides and ice or rock avalanches increasingly dangerous.

Nepal has experienced another disturbing glacial-origin flood as recently as July 2025, when the drainage of a supraglacial lake in Tibet triggered flooding along the Bhote Koshi River, killing people and destroying the Friendship Bridge between Nepal and China.

This is what climate change is doing to the meaning of disaster preparedness. The old assumption was that if you knew the rainy season, you knew roughly what to expect. That assumption is becoming increasingly unreliable. Extreme weather is becoming more complicated. Rainfall can interact with landslides. Rivers can suddenly change course. Infrastructure can become a trap. A drainage system designed for yesterday’s rainfall may be hopelessly inadequate for tomorrow’s storm.

Nigeria must understand this before another tragedy teaches us the lesson in the most expensive way possible. And Abuja, of all Nigerian cities, should understand it first. The Federal Capital was not supposed to grow like an accidental settlement. It was conceived as a planned city. The Abuja Master Plan was developed in 1979, with the Central Area plan subsequently developed in the early 1980s under Japanese architect Kenzo Tange. Its philosophy was based on organised land use, functional districts, green spaces, transportation networks and controlled development.

Its population has expanded dramatically. Its satellite towns have exploded. Its roads have stretched into areas that were once largely undeveloped. Real estate has become one of the city’s most aggressive economic activities. Natural drainage corridors have come under pressure. Green areas have been converted. Buildings have appeared in places that ought to remain open for environmental reasons. The question, therefore, is no longer whether Abuja needs its master plan reviewed. It is why the review has taken so long.

Wike has spoken about the need to review the Abuja Master Plan since 2024. In September that year, he spoke about the need to improve infrastructure, including storm-water and wastewater drainage, while discussing the review of the city’s planning framework.

Yet here we are in August 2026, and the flooding question remains sufficiently serious for stakeholders to be demanding a comprehensive review of the 1979 plan. The FCT Administration itself has now said it is reviewing the plan to reflect the current realities of the capital. That raises an uncomfortable question. If the need for an updated plan was recognised in 2024, why is Abuja still dealing with the consequences of a planning framework conceived nearly half a century ago?

This is not an argument against Wike’s achievements. Since assuming office as FCT Minister in August 2023, he has pushed roads, bridges and other infrastructure projects with an urgency that has visibly altered parts of the capital. That record should be acknowledged. But this is precisely why the argument has become more important. A road is not a city. A bridge is not a city. A beautiful interchange is not a city.

A city is a system. Water must have somewhere to go. Trees and wetlands must have somewhere to survive. Waste must have somewhere to be collected. Buildings must have somewhere they are legally permitted to stand. Roads must be designed alongside drainage. New estates must be connected to adequate infrastructure. Population growth must be anticipated rather than discovered after the fact. This is why the recent flooding in Abuja should not be reduced to the politics of demolition.

On August 18, Wike ordered the demolition of structures built on designated waterways following flooding in parts of the capital. During an inspection of flood-affected areas, the FCT Administration said it discovered a structure on a drainage area whose allocation had been revoked years earlier. That is not merely a story about one illegal structure. It is a story about the failure of a system.

If a piece of land reserved for drainage can be allocated, revoked and later occupied by a structure, then something went wrong at several points in the chain of governance. Someone approved something. Someone failed to enforce something. Someone looked away. Someone built where building was not supposed to happen. Demolition is necessary in some circumstances, but demolition after the damage has occurred is the most expensive form of planning.

That is why Wike’s administration should use the current moment to do something much bigger than clearing waterways. Abuja needs a comprehensive flood and climate resilience plan incorporated into the new master plan. Every major drainage corridor should be mapped and legally protected. Flood plains should be clearly identified. Wetlands and green areas should be treated as infrastructure, not vacant land. Development approvals should take storm-water management seriously. Satellite towns should be integrated into the same planning system rather than allowed to grow independently until their problems become Abuja’s problems.

The public should know which areas are protected waterways. Developers should know the rules before buying land. Government officials should know that approving an illegal structure will have consequences. And influential Nigerians should not be allowed to believe that their influence gives them a private exemption from public planning laws.

The recent flooding has already triggered demands from Abuja stakeholders for the desilting of drainage channels, enforcement against encroachment and a comprehensive review of the 1979 Master Plan. These demands should not be dismissed as another seasonal reaction.

The capital cannot continue to operate with a planning philosophy designed for a city that no longer exists. Wike has spent considerable political capital and public resources improving Abuja’s physical infrastructure. He should now spend the same energy modernising the rules that determine how that infrastructure interacts with the environment.

Otherwise, there is a danger that today’s roads will become tomorrow’s channels for faster-moving floodwater, and today’s new developments will become tomorrow’s flood-prone neighbourhoods. Nepal did not become vulnerable to climate-related disasters overnight.

Cities decline gradually. A wetland disappears here. A drainage channel is narrowed there. A green area is converted somewhere else. An unauthorised building is tolerated because the owner is powerful. A master plan is left unchanged for another year. A drainage project is postponed. Another road is constructed without adequate storm-water infrastructure. Then one day the rain comes. And everybody asks how it happened. Abuja still has the advantage of being able to prevent that question from becoming inevitable.

Wike has said he is reviewing the master plan. Nigerians should now demand that the review be completed, published, debated and implemented, not merely announced. The time for another committee, another promise and another inspection after another flood is gone.

The Nepal disaster is a tragedy, but it is also a warning from a distance. For Abuja, the message could not be clearer. Prepare before the water comes. Because when the flood eventually arrives, it will not ask who approved the building, who ignored the drainage, who postponed the master plan or which administration made the mistake. It will simply come. And by then, politics will be irrelevant.

Alabidun is a media practitioner and can be reached via alabidungoldenson@gmail.com

Tobi Amusan’s Legacy After the World Record Falls, by Boniface Ihiasota  

There are moments in sport when a stopwatch does more than record time. It records the changing of an era. That was the drama that unfolded in Zurich on Thursday, August 27, 2026, when American Olympic champion Masai Russell ran 12.09 seconds to erase Tobi Amusan’s world record in the women’s 100m hurdles.

For Nigerians watching from home and across the diaspora, it was a moment of conflicting emotions. The green-and-white pride associated with Amusan’s name suddenly had a new number attached to it. Yet, perhaps more importantly, the Zurich race demonstrated that sporting greatness is not diminished simply because a record is eventually broken.

Russell’s 12.09 seconds was extraordinary. She lowered Amusan’s 12.12-second world record by three hundredths of a second, with no assisting wind recorded. Reuters reported that Russell pulled decisively clear after the final hurdle to complete one of the defining performances of the 2026 athletics season.

But the story of Zurich is not simply about an American taking a Nigerian record. It is about two exceptional athletes meeting at different points of their careers and, in doing so, reminding the world why records exist in the first place: to be challenged.

Four years earlier, on July 24, 2022, Amusan had stunned the athletics world at Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon. She ran 12.12 seconds in the semi-final of the World Athletics Championships, with a legal tailwind of 0.9 metres per second, establishing a new world record. World Athletics subsequently ratified the performance.

That evening transformed Amusan from a brilliant Nigerian hurdler into a global sporting icon. She went on to win the world title, completing a remarkable championship after having endured fourth-place finishes at the 2019 World Championships and the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. Her 12.12 remained the benchmark for four years.

And perhaps that is why her performance in Zurich deserves more attention than the silver medal beside her name. With the world record literally disappearing in front of her, Amusan did not collapse under the weight of history. Instead, she produced her fastest performance of the 2026 season, clocking 12.23 seconds to finish second behind Russell.

Sport has a cruel habit of reducing athletes to medals, rankings and numbers. But behind every record is a human being who has spent years training, sacrificing and competing against limits that most people will never understand. Amusan’s 12.12 was not merely a number on a results sheet. It represented years of Nigerian athletic excellence and a moment when an African woman stood at the summit of one of the world’s most competitive sporting disciplines.

Russell has now inherited that summit. At 12.09, she has also announced something potentially more significant: the possibility that the women’s 100m hurdles may be entering another extraordinary era. Russell had already run 12.14 earlier in 2026, the second-fastest performance in history at the time, before producing the world record in Zurich.

For the Nigerian diaspora, therefore, this should not be remembered as the night Nigeria lost a record. It should be remembered as the night Tobi Amusan’s record became part of athletics history.

Amusan has already changed how young Nigerian athletes see the hurdles. She has shown that an athlete from Ijebu-Ode can rise through international competition and become the fastest woman ever over the 100m hurdles. Her name will remain attached to the record books as the athlete who broke the barrier first.

Russell’s achievement does not erase Amusan’s chapter. It begins a new one. And perhaps the most beautiful part of Zurich was that Amusan was there when history moved forward. She did not merely watch her record fall; she answered with a season’s best.

That is how champions respond when the world changes around them. The record now belongs to Masai Russell. But the legacy of Tobi Amusan remains unmistakably Nigerian.

Before Wike Turns Abuja City to Jakarta, by Alabidun Shuaib AbdulRahman 

There is something deeply unsettling about watching Abuja, a city conceived as one of Africa’s most ambitious experiments in planned urban development, repeatedly surrender parts of itself to floodwater.

The latest flooding in parts of the Federal Capital Territory is not merely another rainy-season inconvenience. It is a warning. And the warning is bigger than the immediate political argument over whether Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike, should be blamed for what happened.

The more important question is whether Abuja is gradually developing the same urban pathologies that have made Jakarta a global symbol of uncontrolled urban expansion, disappearing waterways, inadequate drainage, environmental degradation and the expensive consequences of allowing development to outrun planning.

That comparison should not be misunderstood. Abuja is not Jakarta. Abuja is inland, while Jakarta is a coastal megacity battling sea-level rise and severe land subsidence. Parts of North Jakarta, for instance, have recorded subsidence of between 15 and 25 centimetres annually, dramatically worsening its exposure to flooding. But cities do not have to share the same geography to share the same mistakes. That is where Wike must be careful.

The former Rivers State governor has unquestionably changed the physical appearance of Abuja since President Bola Tinubu appointed him FCT minister in August 2023. Roads have been reconstructed, bridges completed, neglected infrastructure revived and several long-abandoned projects pushed towards completion.

By July this year, Wike said the FCT had inaugurated its 50th project since the Tinubu administration came into office. The projects include roads, water infrastructure and other public works across the territory. To be fair to him, that record deserves commendation. However, roads alone do not make a city.

A city is a living system. Its roads, drainage channels, wetlands, parks, residential districts or areas, commercial centres, waterways and population must function together. When one element is aggressively developed while another is ignored, the consequences eventually become visible.

The flooding witnessed in Abuja this August should therefore force a more uncomfortable conversation about the direction of the capital. On August 18, Wike visited flood-affected areas in Maitama and reportedly discovered a structure sitting on a drainage area whose allocation had been revoked in 2011 in the public interest. That discovery is important for a reason that goes beyond the particular building because if a plot officially designated as a drainage area could be allocated, revoked and subsequently developed despite the restriction, then Abuja’s problem is not simply rainfall. It is governance.

And governance is precisely where the Jakarta analogy becomes relevant. Jakarta’s flooding crisis was not created overnight. Years of rapid urbanisation, excessive groundwater extraction, loss of natural absorption areas, pressure on drainage systems and development along waterways combined to produce a crisis that became progressively more difficult and expensive to reverse. The World Resources Institute has noted that Jakarta’s land subsidence averages about 12 centimetres annually, with parts of the northern coast experiencing rates as high as 25 centimetres.

As it stands, Abuja does not face Jakarta’s sinking-land problem. But Abuja faces a related urban danger: the gradual destruction of the spaces through which water is supposed to move. A drainage channel is not an empty piece of land waiting for a developer. A wetland is not idle property. A green area is not necessarily undeveloped land begging for a building. They are components of the city’s natural infrastructure. And once politicians, civil servants, developers and influential residents begin treating them as disposable, the city starts paying the price.

This is why Wike’s decision to order the demolition of structures obstructing designated waterways is both necessary and politically dangerous. To some extent, that is the right principle. But principles become meaningful only when they are applied consistently. If Wike demolishes the house of an ordinary resident while a politically connected developer is allowed to retain an equally illegal structure, then the exercise will become another chapter in Nigeria’s familiar story of selective enforcement.

The minister should therefore resist the temptation to turn the demolition campaign into a spectacle. What Abuja needs is not demolition theatre. It needs urban discipline. There must be a comprehensive audit of drainage corridors, floodplains, wetlands and waterways across the Federal Capital City and the satellite towns. Every questionable allocation should be investigated. Every revoked plot should be reconciled with the physical structures standing on it. And where demolition becomes unavoidable, compensation and relocation questions must be handled according to law and due process.

The Abuja Master Plan was conceived precisely to prevent the kind of urban disorder now threatening the capital. The original plan was formulated in 1979, while the detailed plan for the central district was developed in the early 1980s under the direction of Japanese architect Kenzo Tange. That is one of the ironies of modern Abuja. A city designed with extraordinary attention to order is increasingly being tested by disorder.

The original planners could not have predicted Abuja’s current population pressures, real estate boom, traffic density, climate pressures and sprawling satellite settlements. The city has changed dramatically since the 1970s. Yet the answer cannot be to abandon planning. The answer is to update it. Indeed, an urban planning review has noted that Abuja’s 1979 master plan has remained largely unchanged despite more than four decades of rapid urbanisation. This is where Wike’s legacy will ultimately be judged. Will he merely construct more roads within an old urban framework, or will he help create a modern Abuja capable of surviving the pressures of the next 50 years?

Abuja needs an integrated storm-water management strategy, not sporadic intervention after every major rainfall. Drainage channels must be mapped, cleared and maintained before the rains. Construction permits must be linked to proper hydrological assessments. Developers should be required to demonstrate how their projects will manage storm-water runoff. The administration must also look beyond Maitama, Wuse, Garki and the other affluent districts.

The real test of Abuja’s planning system lies in its rapidly expanding outskirts. Kuje, Gwagwalada, Bwari, Kubwa, Lugbe, Karu and other growth corridors are experiencing enormous development pressures. Wike has invested heavily in connecting these communities with roads and other infrastructure. That is commendable. But every new road creates development pressure. Every new interchange increases land value. Every improved corridor attracts houses, shopping centres, estates, filling stations and commercial activity. Infrastructure therefore creates both opportunity and responsibility.

If roads arrive without drainage, planning enforcement, waste management and environmental protection, today’s infrastructure investment can become tomorrow’s flooding problem. This is how cities drift into crisis. Not because one administration deliberately sets out to destroy them, but because thousands of individual decisions accumulate until the city itself begins to malfunction.

Jakarta offers that warning. Its experience demonstrates that once urban environmental damage reaches a certain point, governments spend enormous sums trying to repair problems that could have been prevented much more cheaply through planning and enforcement. Jakarta has consequently had to undertake massive flood-control interventions while simultaneously confronting the consequences of decades of groundwater extraction and uncontrolled urban expansion.

Abuja still has the advantage Jakarta wishes it had, which is time. Wike should therefore see the August flooding as more than an opportunity to order demolitions. It should be the beginning of a comprehensive Abuja Resilience Strategy. That strategy should combine the enforcement of the master plan with a modern review of the master plan itself. It should protect wetlands, restore drainage corridors, expand green infrastructure, improve waste management and establish a transparent digital register of land allocations and planning approvals.

Most importantly, it must end the culture in which political influence can bend urban planning rules. The Maitama discovery is a warning in this regard. A drainage area revoked more than a decade ago should not later become a building site.

Abuja does not need another powerful minister who can demolish structures. It needs institutions powerful enough to prevent illegal structures from being approved in the first place.

Wike has shown that he understands the politics of physical development. He has demonstrated urgency in pushing contractors and completing projects. His administration has been particularly aggressive about roads and other visible infrastructure, with dozens of projects commissioned. Now he must demonstrate that he understands the politics of urban sustainability.

Wike still has an opportunity to change the trajectory of anyhowness building of structures in the city. He can leave Abuja with hundreds of kilometres of roads and dozens of commissioned projects. Or he can leave something more enduring: a capital whose development respects the ecological systems that make urban life possible.

Alabidun is a media practitioner and can be reached via alabidungoldenson@gmail.com