Choking on Abuja’s Waste: Inside Jiyita’s Heartbreaking Struggle for Clean Air and Survival
Special Report by Joycelyn Ellakeche Adah and Maryann Awuya
As you approach the community, the smell reaches you before you get close enough to properly see the dumpsite.
Then come the flies, almost as if they are welcoming you in. And above them, something even more unsettling…., spiders, some of them large and frightening, their webs stretched across trees, rooftops and corners of houses throughout the community.
Big black flies hover around food, move through compounds and settle wherever they can. Mosquitoes are difficult to miss. Nylon bags and other light waste litter parts of the community, carried by the wind from the dumpsite.
And then there is the smoke.
For the people of Jiyita Community in the Federal Capital Territory, these are not occasional encounters with Abuja’s waste. This is the environment in which they live.
Goza dumpsite is just about 80 to 100 yards from some homes.
Grace Enok’s house is directly behind it.
Born and raised in Jiyita, Grace has spent her life watching the dumpsite grow into an increasingly difficult neighbour.
She talks about what happens when the smoke comes, how the smell makes cooking difficult and how the flies invade food.
“Don’t we have any government? Don’t we have somebody that can rescue us from all this trouble?” she asks.
Her own household has also been affected by what she believes are illnesses connected to the environment around them.
Grace told us she has been battling cough and difficulty breathing, while her husband, has been vomiting blood for about two years. The family has spent money going from one hospital to another, but according to her, doctors have not been able to determine what is wrong.
These are the experiences Grace gave us during our visit. They have not been independently medically established.
But her account is not isolated.
Residents across Jiyita described persistent coughing and other health problems. Children, they told us, are particularly affected.
Some residents also raised concerns about tuberculosis and illnesses they associate with years of exposure to smoke, waste and contaminated surroundings.
For Enock Shekwonyadu, Secretary to the Chief of Jiyita Village, the story goes back much further than the current complaints.
Enock, an indigene of the FCT was born and brought up in the community. He remembers Jiyita as a settlement that existed before the dumpsite became what it is today.
“As I speak to you, I am the secretary to the palace, to the chief, and we have tried as possible writing to the government, even the previous government, even before this one, that they should give us clinic healthcare because our children are suffering, our people are suffering”.
He traces the presence of waste disposal in the area back decades, including the Shagari era, when, according to his account, the operation was different from what residents experience today.
“There were mechanics and workshops around the area, and some aspects of the site were taken care of by Julius Berger”, he recalled.
But the last 15 to 20 years, in particular, have brought a dramatic change.
For Enock, what residents now live with is a combination of smoke, offensive odour, mosquitoes, flies, plastic waste and the loss of the source of water they once depended on.
Food, he explained, can attract black flies almost immediately and When the wind blows, nylon and other waste from the dumpsite enter compounds.
Residents gather some of the nylon and burn it because they have few other options for getting rid of it.
Then comes the smoke from the dumpsite itself.
Enock describes the period around November and December as the beginning of what can become months of misery.
Fires can continue burning up until around June, when the heavy rains eventually help to put them out.
“There is a time that almost everybody in the community, both elders, will be urinating with blood until one of the teacher from another community helped us and took us to a healthcare that can give us those medication for free, and that was how many people were able to take care of that.”
“And you see, tuberculosis has affected many of us here, pregnant women don’t enjoy this, it affects them a lot”
Residents attribute some of the fires to scavengers who burn waste while searching through the dumpsite.
Enock also described situations in which fires are allegedly started and left burning for months unending.
During the worst periods, Enock said, residents cannot breathe comfortably, windows have to remain closed and the smoke can become so thick that it is difficult to see the next house.
Grace says she and her household suffers this even more, as her home sits directly behind the dumpsite. When the smoke comes heavily, she told us, she and her husband cannot comfortably come outside.
For a community already worried about the air it breathes, the absence of a primary healthcare centre is another source of concern.
Jiyita residents told us they have repeatedly asked for a clinic and medical outreach. Yet when people fall ill, they have to leave the community to seek medical attention elsewhere.
Enock recalled residents writing to government authorities over the years, including letters to successive FCT administrations.
The community, he said, has not received any tangible acknowledgements and residents are yet to see any kind of intervention.
“According to what we hear, that even the airport authority even written to them that this thing is also affecting the air movement, the smoke, So we have faced many challenges on this, and it is not easy.”
Meanwhile the water story is equally troubling.
During our visit, we saw a stream running through the community.
The water was dark and dirty looking, with a strong foul smell, Nylon and other debris could be seen around it.
Residents told us the stream was once a source of water but is no longer usable.
Enock remembers a time when people could depend on water around the community. Today, he described the water situation as one of the biggest problems facing Jiyita.
The residents also told us about attempts to get help.
They have appealed for water, they have asked for healthcare, they have complained about the smoke, they have complained about the waste, And they have asked for the dumpsite to be moved farther away from their homes.
“We received letter from them, we have not had any serious response from them. Sometimes they promise us. They say their Oga is working on it, Our guy has traveled.”
“You can see this dumping here very close to the to the village. When we requested that the other government Bala mohammed regime, they try to shift it downward, but this present Government, they bring it down to these our fence”.
“So even when we write it back to them, they say, “Ah, yes, our God will work on it. We try as possible to stop it because the more closer it is, the more affected it is to the community”.
There is documentary evidence of at least some of those complaints.
A letter dated January 11, 2018, from Jiyita Community to the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, through the Sarkin Jiwa, complained about the burning of waste at the environmental fill site in the Idu Industrial Area.
The letter described smoke, offensive odour and mosquitoes and listed several health concerns residents associated with the conditions.
The community complained that the smoke could become so bad that residents could not sit outside from the evening and, in the mornings, visibility around the community could be severely.
The residents asked for urgent intervention and specifically requested that the waste disposal operation be moved about two kilometres away from the community.
Another complaint was addressed to the Abuja Environmental Protection Board.
Those letters matter because they put a date on the community’s struggle.
For Auta Daudu, the history is even older.
Born and raised in Jiyita, Auta remembers the dumpsite going back to around 1971.
In his account, the early method was different. A tractor would dig into the ground and waste would be buried.
Then, around 1985, during the Buhari regime, he recalls a change in the way waste was being dumped, with refuse increasingly spread around the area instead of being properly buried.
The community, he said, began to feel the consequences, Waste accumulated, Smoke from burning refuse covered homes, Flies multiplied and Mosquitoes became a constant problem.
And according to him, the people living there had to adapt to an environment that was changing around them.
Auta’s story is also deeply personal.
He recounted the loss of a child, another painful part of the community’s history that he connects with the conditions residents have lived through.
“When they burn the dumpsite, the smoke will come and cover all this community. The smoke will come and cover all the house of this community, and also fly, flying everywhere. And then, if you we dig the borehole, the diseases of the dustbin will affect our borehole”.
“Whatever, we can do here, the bulla will affect it, and our children, They are coughing, There’s many female wey don die and men they also die.”
“And our Children, when you take your child to hospital, they will say where are we staying? Because they see the smoke inside the child blood”
His account joins the concerns raised by other residents about children and babies in the community, particularly during periods when smoke from burning waste becomes intense.
Residents told us they have witnessed children becoming sick and, in some cases, losing children. Some also described babies dying only days after birth and linked those deaths to smoke exposure and the conditions around the dumpsite.
Auta further Narrated his personal health struggle and his alleged comments from the doctors.
“particularly I myself have went to hospital when I was having one cough, The doctor were asking me which environment am I coming from? Because it seems the environment that I come from, I’m not living in a clean environment.”
He claimed that the doctor told him That …
“the disease that is happening is not much, but the environment, the dirty is affecting you. They ask me, How often am I cleaning my environment? I told them, no, it’s not about my house. It is about dumpsite.”
“We have a result from some of them from a hospital here at Idu, who confirms tuberculosis, and it come to the same result that the environment that they are living in here, So when we explain to them where we are coming from, they say that is the cause because it’s the smoke that you are inhaling that is causing all of this.”
These claims require proper medical investigation. Interviews alone cannot establish the cause of a child’s death, and this report does not present the residents’ suspicions as medical findings.
But the fact that residents have repeatedly raised such concerns is itself significant, particularly when placed alongside years of complaints about smoke, water and the absence of basic healthcare.
Enock also described the toll the environment has taken on older people.
He recalled cases of elders becoming seriously ill and community members seeking medical attention.
There is another dimension to the story: the sheer amount of waste Abuja has to deal with.
According to a NESREA assessment using the Waste Wise Cities Tool, Abuja generates about 1,487 tonnes of municipal solid waste every day.
Only about 17 tonnes are recovered daily, representing approximately one per cent of the total generated.
To put that figure into something the human mind can picture, consider an African elephant.
A large African elephant can weigh around six tonnes.
Abuja’s estimated 1,487 tonnes of municipal waste generated every day is therefore roughly equivalent to the weight of 248 African elephants every day.
Not one day a week but Every single day.
And the national picture is much larger.
The World Bank estimates that Nigeria generated about 25 million metric tonnes of municipal solid waste in 2009. By 2021, that figure had risen to 44.5 million metric tonnes.
That 2021 figure works out at roughly 122,000 tonnes of municipal waste every day.
At six tonnes per elephant, that is more than 7.4 million elephant weights of waste in a year.
The comparison is deliberately physical because the numbers are otherwise difficult to imagine.
But the real issue is not simply the amount of waste Nigeria produces, It is how that waste is managed.
In more structured waste management systems, rubbish does not simply move from a household to a dumpsite.
The process begins much earlier.
Waste can be separated at source into organic waste, recyclable materials and other waste streams.
Collection systems move the different materials through organised channels. Materials recovery facilities sort and recover what can be reused or recycled.
Organic waste can be composted or processed through anaerobic digestion.
What remains is then treated or disposed of under controlled conditions.
The European Union’s waste hierarchy places waste prevention first, followed by reuse, recycling and other forms of recovery, with disposal including landfill at the bottom of the hierarchy.
In 2023, municipal waste recycling across the EU stood at about 47.7 per cent, although rates differed significantly from country to country. Germany, for example, recorded a rate of 69 per cent.
The EU also requires member states to work toward reducing municipal waste sent to landfill to 10 per cent or less by 2035.
Landfill itself, where it is used, is subject to controls designed to reduce risks to groundwater, surface water, soil, air and human health.
The comparison does not mean those countries have solved waste management. They have not.
It shows the difference between simply disposing of waste and building a chain around it from separation and collection to recovery, recycling, treatment and controlled final disposal.
In Jiyita, residents live at the end of that chain.
And for them, the consequences are not theoretical, They are in the smoke that enters their homes, They are in the flies that settle on food, They are in the nylon carried into compounds, They are in the stream residents no longer trust, They are in the long journey to find healthcare, And they are in the fear surrounding the health of their children.
Enock’s account also points to another side of the problem: the relationship between the community and the trucks bringing waste.
Residents told us there have been occasions when youths confronted waste trucks after drivers allegedly dumped refuse outside the designated gate or on surrounding roads when the gate was closed.
The community’s frustration has, at times, reached the point where young people have tried to prevent trucks from dumping waste around their homes.
Our efforts to speak with relevant authorities at the dumpsite was denied and we were asked to leave.
But they reflect the tension created when a waste disposal facility exists so close to a settled community.
For the people of Jiyita, the issue is not whether Abuja should have a place to take its waste.
They understand that the city produces enormous quantities of it.
Their concern is what happens when the people living beside that waste begin to feel that they are carrying the cost of the system with their health, their water and their quality of life.
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