Barring an urgent intervention by ‘Mr. Project’, Chief Nyesom Wike, the Honorable Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), the Jabi Lake Recreation Park may soon be taken over by hoodlums and street beggars who throng the arena daily in search of sustenance.
The real danger however, is the definite possibility of dangerous criminals infiltrating the arena some day and effecting traumatizing acts like an abduction.
The Jabi Lake, an aquatic splendour of some sort, is one of the iconic landmarks of Abuja, the Federal Capital city of Nigeria, Africa’s most important country.
Constructed in 1981, as an earthen dam, Jabi Lake is a body of water that was initially created as the first major source of water supply to the people of Abuja. The lake is over 1,300 hectares in total surface area. The reservoir may have initially supplied water to about 100,000 people..
Even though man-made and limited in size, the lake has morphed into a natural aquatic ecosystem, with the potential of standing Abuja in the same stead as one of the beautiful cities in a hinterland decorated with a body of water like Cairo on the bank of the Nile River or the six great lake cities of the United States.
See: Egypt Nile River_ Map, History, Facts, Location, Source
In a bid to enhance its status as a recreation and tourist centre of good reckoning, the Jabi Lake area was reconstructed and re-kitted to become a beautiful recreation park in 2007. The new centre was inaugurated by then President Olusegun Obasanjo. As a reflection of the administration’s high hopes for the park, christened as the Jabi Lake Resort, it invited the American actor and global entertainment icon, Wesley Snipes to grace the occasion.
Unfortunately, all that is history now. Jabi Lake Resort has become a shadow of its old self. The lake has been taken over be seaweed (water hyacinth) while wild bushes have grown around the precincts of the body of water, both completely defiling its scenic beauty.
Most infrastructural facilities provided have been totally vandalized. Armoured cables buried several feet in the ground to connect security lighting poles have been uprooted and carted away. Public conveniences have been taken over by hoodlums and the destitute who have converted them to their abodes.
Street beggars, urchins and hawkers abound, littering the complex with human and material wastes. At the Jabi Lake recreation Park today, fitness enthusiasts who throng the arena daily to walk out, have to wangle through columns of beggars and their wards, mostly out-of-school children who pack into the arena to eke out a living.
Mango and other ornamental trees planted for flora and climatic control are routinely violated and felled.
Hawkers and other petty service providers have erected shacks and other makeshift shelters in the complex thereby giving it a complete slum-look.
Residents of the FCT, revelers, fitness enthusiasts and potential investors who spoke to Nigerian Anchor wonder why such a great recreation facility could be left to waste.
Efforts to get the opinion of officials of the Federal Capital Territory Authority (FCTA) on the issue proved futile.
Experts on tourism suggest the Ministry of the FCT should take steps to extricate property from whatever ownership encumbrances, revamp the facility and put it to some kind of commercial use.
Better still, a Private, Public Partnership could be evolved to ensure that the complex, which was constructed at a great cost to taxpayers is not lost to hoodlums.
