By Sarah NEGEDU
Worried by the rising threats of cultural erosion amongst Abuja’s Original Inhabitants, OIs, a nongovernmental organisation, Helpline Social Support Initiative, HSSI, has launched a two year campaign to restore the cultural identity of Abuja’s natives.
The campaign which was announced on Tuesday in Abuja, is also expected to create sustainable livelihoods for displaced indigenous communities.
At the launch in Abuja, HSSI Project Manager, Onoja Arome, said the two year campaign will focus on training 100 vulnerable women and youth in cultural attire production to preserve indigenous heritage and offer alternative sources of income.
“This project is about more than skills. It’s about raising awareness of the existence and rights of Original Inhabitants whose voices are gradually going on extinction,” Arome said.
He added that beyond skills acquisition, the project will push back against their steady marginalisation and also demand fair compensation for seized ancestral land.
According to him, “advocate the resettlement and adequate compensation of OIs whose land has been encroached upon or taken over by developers without adequate compensation.”
The project, now entering its second phase, builds on a 2021 pilot supported by the MacArthur Foundation through the Resource Centre for Human Rights and Civic Education, CHRICED. According to Arome, the earlier phase trained 200 women and youth, many of whom have become entrepreneurs producing cultural clothing for sale.
He said the intervention became necessary due to the long-standing impact of the 1973 decree which created the FCT, forcibly removing the OIs from their ancestral lands without meaningful restitution.
“The OIs were forced to relinquish their ancestral land for the development of the nation’s capital. The development scattered the indigenous people, with many of them losing most of their economic trees and farm lands, thereby causing a high unemployment rate among the OIs.”
In addition to training, the project also produced 39 radio jingles in indigenous languages during its first phase, and carried out advocacy visits to the FCT department of resettlement and compensation.
“Today, we make bold to reiterate that CHRICED has deemed it fit to continue on the project, thereby supporting us again to continue with the second phase,” Arome said. “We hereby call on all stakeholders in this venture to empathise and sympathise with the OIs and join us in this venture to create an incredible impact that will outlive us and usher new generations to a life of ease in the FCT.”
