When
one of Nigeria's long line of military rulers, General Olusegun
Obasanjo, seized the land on which Abuja was to be built in the late
1970s, he could hardly have imagined that the city would remain
unfinished 35 years on.
Abuja has a makeshift, haphazard feel to it: A place of
bureaucrats and building sites, its streets eerily empty after the buzz
of Lagos or the enterprising bustle of Kano. It is one of the most expensive cities in Africa, and one of the most charmless.
The skyline is dominated by the space-rocket spires of the National Christian Centre and the golden dome of the National Mosque, facing each other pugnaciously across a busy highway at the city's centre.
