CHRICED Makes Case For  FCT Original Inhabitants Over Continuous Marginalisation

The Resource Center for Human Rights and Civic Education (CHRICED) has decried the continuous marginalisation of the Original Inhabitants of the Federal Capital Territory FCT, stating they have been left to live in regret.

The Executive Director CHRICED, Dr Ibrahim Zikirullahi, made this known at an event organised in collaboration with MacArthur Foundation on Saturday with the theme, 'Building Resilience, Fostering Recovery:FCT Original Inhabitants and the Struggle for Social Justice,' in Abuja.

Zikirullahi faulted the government for making life painful for those who sacrifice to give Nigeria its center of unity to be left in despair, adding that the deprivation the FCT original inhabitant are subjected to do not connect to the supposedly beautiful city center.

"The ancestral land of the original inhabitants where they have their crops, farming, fishing, and their lives are taken away from them with little or no compensation with nobody listening to them.

"Even when the government sites all kinds of necessary law that they have the right to forcefully take over their land. 

"Today they are just like orphans. They have no place.

"They are homeless, they are landless, they are stateless, and these are issue we are putting nationally for everybody to listen to because hardly any tribe in this country today will say they do not have presence in Abuja.

"And if we want to have peace, there is need for us to address the problem facing the original inhabitants.

"The Constitution states the government have authority to take over land for public use, but not for them to confiscate and sell for billions of naira for hotels and the rest.

"If we are in a working system, where justice work, the original inhabitants ought to be collecting rent, in all these lands that have been given away."