Whilst I am prepared to accept that the IAI report, and specifically the numbers involved in one hit" of demolition/eviction are an exaggeration, little of this is reported in the MSM. It has mostly been highlighted by Amnesty, the UNHCR and other NGOs.

It fits into a long term pattern in Nigeria. As I think I said, when I was there (over a period of twenty years my family has lived there since 1980) there have been mass evictions all over the country. Even Biafra was caused by evictions (of civil servants) on ethnic and racial grounds from Hausa cities like Kaduna.

What is clear is that when people see their leaders living in what would be opulence even by western standards, they wonder why they can't "be a part of that" and vanity projects like Abuja were bound to attract rural-urban migrants.

Nigeria has vast wealth which ought to be being used better in a country in which 70% of the population are below the accepted dollar a day poverty line and few have any land rights whatever.

That is a failure of planning, not a triumph of planning, and to take out that failure on the least fortunate is a human rights abuse under any definition.

The master plan was devised in the late seventies. When we were in Kenya in the seventies Nairobi was still a relatively small city of not much more than a million inhabitants. As the propensity for urban migration became clear all over Africa the Abuja plan should have been updated to take account of this.

The leadership of a nation cannot cosset itself inside its new city walls and play blind to the plight of those it excludes."