GEOGRAPHY
Abuja, Nigeria’s new capital city, is located in the middle of the country. The Federal Capital Territory has a land area of 8,000 square kilometres, which is two and halftimes the size of Lagos, the former capital of Nigeria.
The FCT is bounded on the north by Kaduna State, on the west by Niger State, on the east and south-east by Plateau State, and on the south-west by Kogi State. It falls within latitude 7° 25' N and 9° 20° North of the Equator and longitude 5° 45' and 7° 39'.

Abuja is in tune with nature with abundant hills, highlands and other distinguishing features that make it a delight to behold. A scene that cannot be missed about Abuja is the coming together of the Savannah grassland of the north and the middle belt with the richness of the tropical rain forests of the south. This marriage of nature has ensured that Nigeriaʼs capital is endowed with fertile land for agriculture and at the same time a yearly climate that is neither too hot nor too cold.

WEATHER and CLIMATE
The FCT has two distinct seasons, namely the rainy season that begins around March and runs through October and the dry season which begins from October and ends in March. However, within these seasons is a brief harmattan season that is occasioned by the north east trade wind and the attendant dust haze, increased cold and dryness.

Weather conditions in Abuja are influenced by its location within the Niger ¬Benue trough on the windward side of the Jos Plateau and at the climate transition zone between the essentially 'humid' south and the 'sub-humid' north of the country. The climatic dictates of the FCT are essentially from the south ¬west to the north west due to the rising elevation from the Gurara valley in the south west, to the Bwari-Aso hills and the Agwa ¬Karu hills to the north east.

The high temperatures and the relative humidity in the Niger ¬Benue trough give the Federal Capital Territory a heating effect but the increasing elevation towards the north east reduces the heat in areas like on the Gwagwa plains where the Federal Capital City (FCC) is sited than on the Iku-Gurara plains to the west.

Rainfall in the FCT reflects the territory's location on the windward side of the Jos Plateau while the monthly rainfall distribution intensifies during the months of July, August and September.

SETTLEMENTS
The settlement pattern of the indigenous rural communities in the FCT is the nucleated type and scattered in the plains. A typical village is made up of hamlets, while a ward is made up of households which are close to each other basically for security and defense purposes.

Historically, most settlements were on the hills until when the colonial government forced them to the plains in the second decade of the 20th century and the settlement pattern of the inhabitants was greatly influenced by shifting cultivation practice because crops such as guinea corn, maize, millet, yam and coco yam consume a lot of nitrogen, phosphorus and other nutrients.

ETHNIC GROUPS
Early studies on the ethnic grouping in FCT were contained in the contributions by scholars on the origins of the people in the middle belt. Early contributors like W. Morgan (1912) and N. F. Nandel (1936) traced the indigenes of FCT to the Beriberi or Kanuri stock from Borno. However, latest studies from scholars like A. Obayemi, Stanford, Armstrong and K. Williamson have faulted these early thoughts but based on new historical facts, it has been argued that the early settlers in FCT do not share any linguistic similarity with the Beriberi.

Several archeological evidences have indicated that the FCT indigenes were of the Kwa language group that was predominantly found around the Niger-Benue confluence and is known to have settled in the area centuries before the incursion of the Kanuri in the jihad of the 19th century.

It is also significant that a map of Nigerian languages by Standford classified the Kanuri under the Nilo-Sahara languages. This clearly debunks any affinity of the Gbagyi language to the Kanuri.

Other groups in the FCT are Bassa, Gade, Gwandara, Koro and Ganagana, all of which have deep affiliation with the Kwa language groups dominant in the present middle belt area.

OCCUPATIONAL STRUCTURE
The indigenes of Abuja are chiefly subsistence farmers. The major food crops include yam, maize, guinea corn, beans and millet. Fishing activities are also prominent among the Bassa people and villagers along rivers of Usamma, Jabi and Gurara. Besides farming, wood and craft work was and still a notable occupation of the people of the territory especially the Gbagyis. Products derived from wood work include mortars, pestles and tobacco pipes of various dimensions, masks, musical instruments and other household utensils. The Ganagana are renowned in iron works. They produce such items as knives, hoes, dane guns, arrows and ornaments. Cloth weaving is practised by women who weave heavy and closely patterned materials of different colours.

SOCIO-CULTURAL LIFE
Before 1976, there was not a single secondary school in the whole area that now constitutes the FCT and the few primary schools existing were established as part of the Universal Primary Education (UPE) programme of that same year. In the area of health care, there was no standard hospital or health centre and few ill-equipped dispensaries existed in Gwagwalada, Garki, Kwali, Bwari and Karu.

The four major roads leading into the territory, namely Koton Karfe-Abuja (150km), Bida¬-Abuja (156km), Minna-Abuja (112km) and Keffi-Abuja (94km), were not tarred by 1976. Thus movement of persons was largely by foot or bicycle.

By 1976, the main type of architectural style was the round Sudanese type common in the FCT. There were also a few rectangular "west coast" type and by the side of these residential huts were cone-shaped granaries.

With regard to religious beliefs there is a good spread of adherents of the major religions although the traditionalists are still large in number. The aggressive spread of Islam at the beginning of the nineteenth century from the north towards the south made little or no impact due to the broken and rocky terrain of large parts of the middle belt which handicapped the jihadists' mounted troops.

On the other hand, Christianity which spread mainly from the coast and the lower Niger could not really penetrate the Middle-Belt effectively because of the distance of the area from the coast which acted as a major hindrance before great improvements in transportation and the desire of the British colonial administration not to disturb the status quo as far as religion was concerned.

ADMINISTRATION
Before the creation of the Federal Capital Territory the administrative structure that existed could broadly be classified into three historical periods of the pre colonial period when the various ethnic groups in the area were administered as autonomous kingdoms with diverse inter-ethnic, political and economic relations and the colonial and post-independence periods.

External influences such as the slave trade, the jihad and colonial administration greatly affected the pattern and structure of administration of the indigenous groups that brought about the creation of large administrative units under the rule of newly created administrative heads, by colonialist through the administrative instrument of indirect rule.

The political and administrative setting of the FCT area was based on Native Authority (NA) institution where emirates were established with emirs and first class chiefs at the head of the administrative and judicial hierarchy. The emirates were further broken into units of districts headed by district heads who were answerable to the emirs. However, this was affected by the series of local government reforms that has ended up placing traditional rulers under local government administrative heads.

However, of the areas carved out of three States of Nigeria to form the FCT, none was neither a local government area nor federal constituency. The existing administrative structures then were emirate districts which had a number of villages under them. The FCT area accordingly consisted of eleven (11) districts out of which Niger State had six (6), Plateau State four (4), and Kogi (then Kwara) one (1). These districts provided the basis for the creation of Development Areas with the creation of the FCT that were later upgraded and merged into Area Councils.

SOIL and LAND CAPABILITY
The two main types of soils in FCT are the sedimentary belt in the southern and south-western extremities of the territory and the pre-Cambrian Basement complex rock country which accounts for more than 80 percent of the territory.

The sedimentary formation, being part of the Nupe land sandstones, consists mainly of fine-grained sandstones with inclusions of grits, siltstone and clay lense and the Basement complex consists of a wide variety of rock types which can be classified into three broad groups:

(i) The igneous rocks made up mostly of biotite grantie, rhyolite, syenite, gabbro diorite. The granites account for most of the rock domes and massive hills in the north-eastern and north-western parts of the territory, including the Bwari-Aso hills. The Iku-Gurara plains are largely underlain by rhyolite which also occurs over large sections of Gwagwa plains.

(ii) The migmatites and gneiss complex which are metamorphic rocks consisting mostly of migmatite, granite, gneiss and porphyritic gneiss occur on the Gwagwa, Iku-Gurara and Robo plains.

(iii) Schists, including biotite/muscovite schists, muscovite and tale schists with quartzite intrusive account for most of the rugged landscape in the eastern and southern parts of the FCT. The migmatite, granite, gneiss and biotite granite underline the site of the FCC. These are rocks of medium to high strength which were not expected to present serious engineering problems and which, therefore, should provide suitable locations for engineering structures.

The rocks of the FCT are generally quartz-rich, acidic types which account for the generally sandy nature of the soil, especially on the Iku ¬Gurara, Robo and Rubochi plains.

The Gwagwa plains have the most fertile soils and the best agricultural lands of all the plains of the FCT while the high sand content of most soils within the FCT accounts for the relatively high erosion status. There is however, one major advantage about the type of rocks and soils found in the FCT because of the availability of construction materials in the form of building stones, quartz and pistolitic gravel, building sands and earth for use as foundation materials.

VEGETATION
The Federal Capital Territory falls within the Savannah zone vegetation of the West African sub-region but patches of rain forest, however, occur in the Gwagwa plains that form one of the surviving northern-most occurrences of the mature forest vegetation in Nigeria.

The vegetation of the FCT is divided into three Savannah types of park or grassy that occupies about 53 percent of the total area and where the vegetation is annually; the Savannah woodland that occurs mostly in the rugged and less accessible parts on the Gurara, Robo and Rubochi plains and surrounding hills. They cover 12.8 percent and the Shrub Savannah that occurs extensively in rough terrain close to hills and ridges in all parts of the FCT and covers about 12.9 percent of the land area.

WILDLIFE
The hilly terrain and vegetation of the FCT create a good environment for the establishment of national parks, game reserves and zoological gardens, while common forest animals in and around the FCT include bush buck (alcephalus scriptus), forest black duicker (cephalohus niger), bush pig
pootamochoerus porcus), chimpanzee (pan troglodytes) and red flanked duicker (cephalophus rufilatus).

The Savannah woodlands have animal species like Leopard (Paurthera pardus, Kob (Kobuskob), Buffalo (Syncerosnanus, Roanantelope (Hippotragus eguinnus, Western hartebeest (Alcephalus buselaphu, Elephant (Loxoconta africana), Warthog (Pharcocoerus aethiopicus, Red flanked duicker (Cephalophus rufilatus), Grey duicker (Cephalphus monticola), Dog-faced baboon (Papic anubis), Patas monkey, (Erythrocebus patas),Green monkey (Cercopithecusaethiops) and Bush buck (Tragelaplus sciptus.