Hipcity Innovation Centre has engaged government on the need to make available, basic social amenities for the Original Inhabitants of Abuja in Abaji, one of the Area councils in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.
The Executive Director of the Centre, Mr Bassey Bassey speaking during a Town Hall meeting with the original indigenes of the FCT, in partnership with MacArthur Foundation, on Wednesday in Abaji, said basic service delivery is a human right as written in the constitution.
He said, “their major concern is about basic service delivery because they are human rights, basic education is a human right enshrined at the level of the United Nation, even in Nigeria’s constitution, and that is why education sits in the concurrent list of the constitution, and the three tiers of government have a role to play.
Bassey stressed that “health, water, are issues we are prioritising because when you provide people with water it therefore means that the issues of hygiene or illnesses that have to do with hygiene, we saw during the time of Covid, we were all asked to wash our hands regularly for many of these communities who do not have water it became a problem and that was why so the issue of spread became eminent.
He added, “we must keep the issue of basic service delivery at the front burner, these are the basic duties that government owe the people so we must talk about these things regularly, where they are doing well we must commend them, where they are failing we call them out and where we can support we help them out.”
The speaker of the Abaji area council in the FCT Haruna Farouk expressed the council’s resolve to address basic needs of the citizens in the locality.
Farouk stated that the council has already captured all the basic needs of the people of the council in its 2023 budget adding that it will take care of bad roads, construction of drainages, open defecation, unemployment empowerment and water supply.
He stated “we have the budget for 2023 and all that they mentioned are already captured in the budget. The chairman is a working type and I am sure he will do all that is possible to take care of the drainages, bad roads, and open defecation.
“All the complaints raised by the people of Abaji area council are on our table and we have prepared to go round the ten wards to see things for ourselves even.
“On the area of priority I have given out scholarships to some pupils in the area council and I am going to do more.
Representative of the Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Agency RUWASSA, Usman Sunday explained that their role is to gather complaints from communities then channel these challenges back to the government through Hipcity.
“Our agency is in the process of carrying out a baseline survey on water in those communities that have water, those that are functional and those that can be repaired and those that can have new ones.
“The agency is collaborating with others to construct toilets in parks, market places, gardens and where people gather so that people will practice open defecation.
“Our responsibility is how to provide water to the communities while the communities’ response is how to construct their own household toilets and use while in public places, our agency will see how to facilitate construction of toilets in those places. We are targeting more than a thousand toilets across the FCT.
