I remember back in the days when one of the bragging rights Abuja residents had over Lagosians was that there is no traffic in Abuja and the roads are always free but this is no longer the case. Some parts of Abuja are now so congested that there are more traffic jams in those places than in Lagos. Places like Inyanya/ Mararaba, some parts of Lugbe, some parts of Kubwa Express etc. are always densely congested in the early hours of the morning on a typical working day.
The Abuja of the early 2000s used to be a dreamland; broadway, serene and clean city, affordable housing and most importantly, free flow of traffic.
In this piece, I will be making a recommendation that I arrived at through commonsense as an Abuja resident which I strongly believe that if adhered to could ease the traffic congestion that is becoming a plague in the Abuja metropolitan city.
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The number one basic recommendation is the decongestion of the city Centre by relocating some of the ministries and agencies of the government to some other parts of the federal capital territory. The federal secretariat complex in the central area houses almost all of the ministries and as expected, Abuja being a civil service town, all roads from different parts of the FCT that leads to the central area get choked up in the morning and in the evenings. The airport road gets choked up, the Gwarimpa/ Katampe Expressway gets choked, and the Mararaba axis gets choked up etc. because most people are traveling from places like Bwari, Kubwa, Masaka, Inyanya, even from deep Nasarawa state to their places of work at the Abuja city centre which should not be so.
This is why some of these ministries and agencies need to be relocated out of the city to ease the traffic pressure in the city centre.
For instance, the Ministry of Agriculture has no business being in the city centre, the Ministry of Interior should be somewhere close to the airport, and the list goes on.
Same with Industries. Industries should never be allowed to site their production sites in the city centre and those already in the city centre like Wuse, Maitama, Garki etc. should be relocated out. Their administrative offices could be in the city but their production sites should be relocated out.
I totally understand that the core reason or excuse some of the ministries may give for them not to be relocated out of the city centre is security but some agencies are already out in some outskirts suburbs of Abuja and they are quite safe. JAMB and the Nigerian Law School for instance are in Bwari which is a suburban town in Abuja and it has been safe.
The added advantage is if some of these ministries and agencies are relocated somewhere else it will not just expand development to other suburbs and rural parts of Abuja it will also reduce the pressure on the demand for housing which is making prices of accommodation go through the roof in city centres
Abuja already has a good and broad roads network, so expansion of roads will not be the solution to this traffic congestion that keeps adding up, it will help but the ultimate solution is decongesting the city centre by relocating some of these ministries out of the city centres.