By Martins Oloja
As I was saying in my January 10, 2026 intervention here: “Wike has deftly assisted the President to consolidate welfare of judicial officers the same president earlier approved 300% increase in wages for.” He has been building retirement estates for judicial officers. He has impressed the President as ‘Mr. Project’. He has become the President’s ‘Man Friday’ in Abuja.
And in my August 2026 piece on Abuja @ 50, I also noted: “The man constitutionally tasked to govern the FCT as its de-facto Governor – President Bola Ahmed Tinubu – said nothing of national weight on February 3, 2026, when Abuja turned 50. The man physically administering the FCT, Minister Wike was not in Abuja. He was in Rivers State, touring Local Government Councils in what was clearly a political show of force. If the President cannot celebrate Abuja@50, if the Minister can abandon Abuja@50 to campaign in Rivers, then who is governing Abuja? Who is protecting Abuja’s institutions”?
The President is Visitor to Uni-Abuja. He has never visited Uni-Abuja as Visitor for a convocation in a meaningful way, as I noted: “What is worse, since 1988, even the university hasn’t welcomed many Visitors to the university during convocations.” A university whose Visitor never visits is an orphan. An orphan whose land is being taken is an orphan being robbed in broad daylight while its father is in the next room, watching football.
Where is the National Assembly – the Parliament of Abuja?
The 1999 Constitution makes the National Assembly the legislature for Abuja. There is no Abuja House of Assembly. The Senate and House are the Assembly. As I wrote in January 2026: “The 1999 Constitution as amended makes the National Assembly the legislature for Abuja. But they have never invited and cannot invite the genius for questioning even when there were reports that the International Conference Centre built in 1990 with N240 million was renovated with N39 billion in 2025. Who are they in National Assembly to invite the genius of all times to even defend allegations that he has allocated many plots of land to himself and family members in Abuja?”
That is the indictment.
The National Assembly has Committees on FCT. It has Committee on Education. It has Committee on Land. It has oversight powers. It can summon Wike. It can summon the Education Minister. It can summon the FCTA Director of Lands. It can demand the list of allottees of the 7,000 hectares. It can demand the court order compliance report. It has done none of these.
So, why the silence? Many National Assembly members are beneficiaries of Abuja land allocation. Many have plots in Guzape, in Maitama Extension, in Katampe, in Giri – allocated by the same Minister they are supposed to oversight. How do you oversight your allocator?
I also once noted this on the FCT representation crisis: “Since there is no elected governor, the highest elected officer in the capital of the federation is the Senator representing the Territory of only one senatorial district. Since 1999 when democracy was restored, no senator representing the FCT has led any of the two committees of the bi-cameral National Assembly to assess the infrastructure needs of the Federation University.” One Senator for six (6) Area Councils. Two House members for the whole FCT. No Governor. No Assembly. Abuja is the most under-represented territory in Nigeria. Its indigenous population – Gbagyi, Gwandara, Koro, Gade, Bassa, etc – have no state to call their own. They were told in 1976 that they would be compensated, resettled, integrated. Fifty years later, they are still ‘waiting for Godot’. And now the university that was meant to educate their children is being carved.
Where are the Abuja stakeholders? Where are the traditional rulers of Gwagwalada, Kuje, Bwari, Kwali, Abaji, AMAC? Where are the FCT indigenous associations? Where are the 36 state governors who are stakeholders of the federation university? Where are the alumni? Where are the 55,000 students? Silence.
The civil service abandoned –The head of service symbol
Let’s ask a pointed question:
Why is the civil service too abandoned, where even the Head of Service has been acting since September 9, 2025?
The facts confirm it. After the death of Mrs. Grace Adayilo, the first female and first indigenous Head of Service of the FCTA, on September 1, 2025, Mrs. Nancy Sabanti Nathan was appointed Acting Head of Service on September 9, 2025, “pending the appointment of a substantive Head of Service.” More than one year later, she is still acting. The FCTA civil service – the bureaucracy that should protect the Master Plan, that should keep land records, that should resist illegal allocations, that should process the university’s title – is headed by an acting officer who serves at the pleasure of the Minister. An acting Head of Service cannot say no to a Minister who can remove her tomorrow. An acting Permanent Secretary cannot protect a file. An acting Director of Lands cannot refuse to “carve out” 7,000 hectares.
This is not a coincidence. This is how capture works. You keep the civil service in acting capacity, in fear, in temporary status, so that no one has the security to say: “Sir, this allocation violates the court order.”
I noted in my portrait of the minister: “Your industrious genius who hasn’t addressed welfare and housing deficit of FCT civil servants has been building retirement estates for judicial officers. The impetuous minister who hasn’t visited the University of Abuja on behalf of the President, the Visitor, to assess the housing needs of Staff and Students has taken 70% of their land. But the same Minister has promised to build many hostels for Law School Students in Abuja.” He builds for judges, not for civil servants. He builds for Law School, not for Uni-Abuja. He builds roads, not institutions. Roads are visible. Institutions are invisible – until they collapse.
And the mainstream media? Minister Wike deserves much more than he is getting from mainstream media – not criticism, but understanding of his genius. The media in Abuja depends on FCTA adverts, on road commissioning coverage, on access to the Minister’s press briefings. Who will bite the hand that gives advert money? So the media that amplified “Uni-Abuja land grabber” in July 2025 has gone quiet in November 2026, even when ASUU says court order was violated.
The indigenous question: who benefits?
The indigenous population of Abuja did not benefit from the UniAbuja land grab. They will not benefit from the malls. When Abuja was created in 1976, the Gbagyi and other indigenous peoples were promised that the new capital would bring them development, schools, hospitals, jobs. Instead, they watched their farmlands become Maitama, Asokoro, Wuse, Garki. They watched their villages become estates for the rich. They watched their children become tenants in their own land.
Uni-Abuja was supposed to be different. It was supposed to be a federal institution in their land, but for all Nigerians, with admission for their children, employment for their youths, research for their agriculture. Now, if 7,000 hectares are given to private investors – many of them not from Abuja, many of them not even from Nigeria – what do the indigenous people get? Shopping malls they cannot afford to shop in? Estates they cannot afford to rent? Roads they cannot afford to drive on?
This is the final betrayal of the Master Plan. The Master Plan was not just about roads. It was about justice. It was about creating a capital that belongs to all, not to a few land barons.
Who Will Protect Uni-Abuja? A 7-Point Demand
If no one will protect Uni-Abuja, then we must name who should and demand it publicly.
1. The President, as Visitor and Governor of Abuja: He must immediately suspend all allocations on the disputed 7,000 hectares, pending determination of the suit, and set up a Presidential Visitation Panel to investigate the land issue. He must visit Uni-Abuja in person – not to commission a road, but to walk the campus.
2. The Minister of Education: He must file a formal protest to the President and to the National Assembly, and instruct the NUC and the University Council to defend the university’s title in court. Silence is complicity.
3. The National Assembly: The Senate Committee on FCT and Committee on Tertiary Education must summon Wike, the Education Minister, and the FCTA Director of Lands, and publish the full list of allottees of the 7,000 hectares. They must also amend the FCT Act to protect university lands from ministerial revocation without presidential approval and National Assembly ratification.
4. The Judiciary: The Maitama High Court order of August 18 must be enforced. Contempt proceedings must follow if allocations were made on September 26 in defiance. A court order that a minister can ignore is not a court order – it is a suggestion.
5. ASUU, NANS, Alumni, and Civil Society: ASUU Uni-Abuja has already drawn the battle line. It must be joined by national ASUU, by NANS, by Uni-Abuja alumni in all 36 states, by the Nigerian Bar Association, by the 36 state governors who are stakeholders of the federation university. This is not a Uni-Abuja problem. It is a federation problem.
6. The Abuja Indigenous Stakeholders and Traditional Rulers: The Etsu of Gwagwalada, the Aguma of Gwagwalada, the chiefs of Giri, the Gbagyi associations – they must speak. The land was taken from their ancestral area for a university. If the university loses it to private investors, their sacrifice is wasted.
7. The Media: The media must stop amplifying “land grabber” without context. It must investigate: Who got the 7,000 hectares? How much did they pay? Was there public tender? Where is the money? That is journalism.
Final Word: A university isn’t a plot. I ended my July 2025 commentary with a plea: That the President should lead, yes lead, Minister Wike to look beyond the land of the University of Abuja. I wrote then that it would have been more remarkable if Wike had led the President to commission a world-class digital Abuja National Library where we can access documents on national development. Instead, we got roads to EFCC Academy on university land, and now malls on university land. Yes, a university is not a plot. A university is a future. When you take 7,000 hectares from a university, you are not taking land. You are taking hostels that will never be built. You are taking research farms that will never grow food. You are taking a medical school that will never train doctors for Abuja. You are taking a Cancer Research Centre that, as Pro-Chancellor Tejuoso revealed, had approached the university to build a world-class facility – and may now go elsewhere.
Who will protect UniAbuja from the untouchable Wike?
The answer must be: All of us. Reason: if a minister can take 70% of a federation university’s land in broad daylight, in defiance of a court order, and no one – not the President, not the Education Minister, not the National Assembly, not the media, not the civil service – says anything, then no institution in Nigeria is safe. Today it is UniAbuja. Tomorrow it will be the National Hospital land. Next tomorrow it will be the Law School land. Next week, it will be your own plot. The federation must protect its university, or admit that the federation itself has been captured. ‘For Unity and Scholarship’ – The motto of Uni-Abuja must not die on Giri Road.
The Guardian
