Abuja

What happens when those meant to enforce the law are the ones who break it?

For many in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital city in the North Central, before 2024, the answer lay in the abrupt, often unceremonious, motor checks conducted by Vehicle Inspection Officers (VIOs). To many motorists, these inspections, which were meant to ensure the roadworthiness of vehicles, appeared instead as an avenue for these officers to extort unlawful payments. 

Mubarak Muhammed*, a cybersecurity specialist, who once faced such a situation, said:

“I was stopped by these officers and asked to pay ₦9,000 for no reason. They searched my car but never found anything wrong with it, yet they still asked me to pay. I begged for them to let me go because at the time, I was low on funds, with only ₦11,000 in my account. Well, I ended up paying the money, but it wasn’t enough. Their Oga [referring to the senior officer] entered my car and told me I had to settle him privately, that he knew I had money, so I should give him ₦50,000.” At that point, Mubarak said he called his father, who sent their driver to retrieve the car. Only then did the officers back down. 

Stories like Mubarak’s are commonplace on the streets of Abuja, with ongoing claims by some motorists that extortive car searches were a day-to-day stressor. The issue was so rampant that in 2016, the Nigerian newspaper Daily Trust wrote an article summarising the concerns of many. In it, frustrated Abuja drivers expressed their displeasure with the car searches that left their pockets drained. 

Over the years, the issue has not faded. In 2024, some residents took to social media, their anger at the VIO system bitterly typed out. One user, in an essay posted on Reddit, expressed their disbelief over being fined ₦75,000 for allegedly beating a red light, an accusation they denied.

This slow-cooking pot of complaints finally reached its boiling point. Towards the end of 2024, human rights activist and lawyer Abubakar Marshal filed a lawsuit against the Federal Capital Territory Directorate of the Road Traffic Services (FCT-DRTS), commonly known as VIO. He argued that no law allowed the officers or related agents to stop, impound, confiscate, seize, or impose fines on motorists.

The judge, Evelyn Maha of the Federal High Court, Abuja, ruled in favour of Abubakar’s argument. On October 2, 2024, the court barred the VIO in FCT from carrying out such actions. 

The ruling was met with jubilation. On X, the microblogging site, one user said, “This is great news,” while another called it “Long overdue.”

But the victory was short-lived. The directorate quickly opposed the judgment and sought an appeal. A consensus was never reached, and so the initial judgment stayed in place: VIO vanished from Abuja’s bustling streets, vehicles went around without inspections, and motorists adjusted to a city without the officers.

That was until technology offered the officers a way back onto the roads

In February 2025, just four months after the ruling, the VIO unveiled an Automated Number Plate Recognition system (ANPR system) that allowed the officers to digitally check plate numbers and ensure all of a vehicle’s credentials were in place. Abdullateef Bello, the FCT-DRTS director, said the system had “legal backing.” It was a way to subvert the issues posed by the barring. Physical checks had been banned, but tech-geared ones hadn’t.

“We are embracing technology in our activities. We have even started,” Kalu Emetu, the spokesperson of the VIO in Abuja, told HumAngle. “Once you have committed certain offences, there will be no need for officers to go after you. What you will get is an e-ticket from us, and you will go and pay into a designated account which belongs to the government.” 

Digitally armed, the officers returned to the city’s streets in February, sliding back as if they never left. But, just as easily as they came back, so did the issues. 

For starters, some motorists told HumAngle that the technology was abandoned before it could even settle, and in less than a year, physical inspections have made a full comeback to the streets of Abuja, though this defies the legal bounds of their return. 

Hadiza Balal*, a 23-year-old learner driver, fell prey to one of these searches in June.

“I was flagged down in Mpape and asked to pull over. At the time, my car papers were expired, so when I was stopped, I knew I was entering a situation I would not easily escape.” 

The officer leaned his head through the window, eyes darting around the interior of the car in search. Finally, after what felt like an eternity to Hadiza, the officer asked her for the thing she feared he would: her car papers.

“When he noticed they had expired, he demanded I pay a fine. I thought the most he would ask for was ₦5,000, but he insisted I give him ₦27,000 to renew my papers,” she recounted. 

This process not only rattled Hadiza, but also stood in direct violation of what the officers were now allowed to do on the road. Physical papers were meant to be viewed on computerised devices, and checks were meant to be done with a quick scan of Hadiza’s plate number, not with the officer halfway into the driver’s seat.

What’s more, when Hadiza finally paid him, there was no e-ticketing as promised, just a demanded transaction that left her suspicious. 

“I managed to persuade the officer to lower the fine to ₦26,500, which would also cover the cost of renewing my documents,” she said, seeming frustrated. “But when I inquired about paying the fine at his station, he insisted that I pay him directly.”

Hadiza didn’t leave until a transfer was made into an account that, she claimed, could never belong to any official organisation. “It was a personal account,” she stated. “A first and last name, with no indication that the account belonged to the government.”

The moment the transfer was done, the officer’s attitude mellowed. The officer who’d been arguing with her was suddenly kind. But even after this struggle, Hadiza faced a second round of problems at the VIO office, where she went to renew the papers.

She described the place as cramped and stifling. The officers ignored her for several minutes before one approached her — not to assist, but to harass.

“He called me “baby girl” and told me I was his girlfriend. I wanted to punch him when he touched my leg, saying he wanted to get to know me more, but I didn’t do anything because I wanted the process to go fast so I could go home,” she recounted. 

Hadiza eventually renewed the documents. 

While some, like Hadiza, leave physical searches unopposed, others demand their right to a digital check, yet, even with their resistance, they are denied the right. 

At Life Camp roundabout in Abuja Municipal Area, Daniel Livinus was stopped by an officer who followed due protocol, only to be hounded by a second officer who didn’t.

“The first one came and scanned my plate number. He didn’t even say anything, just scanned and left,” Daniel recounted. “Not less than a minute later, another one came and asked me to show him my particulars. I said, “Ah, but you can check it on your phone now.” That’s all it took for the man to start shouting, “Will you be the one to teach me my job?”

The fight got heated, so much so that the first officer and a random passerby went to mitigate the situation. David said that both men sided with the aggrieved officer, saying that he should obey because the officer is “doing his job”. 

“If he followed normal protocol, I wouldn’t have had an issue with him,” Daniel added. 

While some motorists are denied the use of the technology, others face issues with it. Sometimes, when scans don’t go through, the officers use that as an incentive to fine motorists who haven’t done wrong.

For Nanlian Mamven, a 21-year-old youth corps member, his car, registered in Plateau State, made him a victim of this issue.

“VIO stopped me at a traffic light and ran my plate number through this new app,” he recounted. “The app is supposed to bring out all your registration information. Still, my details didn’t pop up for some reason, most likely because my car was registered in Plateau, and I think the app only covers FCT-registered cars. It should have been fine because I still had my valid registration papers, but the officers entered the back of my car, told me to drive to their station, and demanded I pay ₦ 28,000.”

Unlike the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), which oversees traffic regulation across the entire country, the Vehicle Inspection Office is run by state governments and the FCT Authority. This means that systems or technologies introduced in the FCT, such as the ANPR app, may not apply uniformly in other states. As a result, vehicles registered outside the FCT often face complications when subjected to Abuja’s digital checks.

Nanlian soon realised this was not just a technical glitch but an extortion attempt. Only after he contacted his mother’s friend, a senior officer, did the demands vanish.

“The senior officer I called said no, the money they were asking for wasn’t the proposed money they should have called, so clearly they had added something to it. When I gave the phone to one of them, they hastily told me I could go. That was how I escaped that day,” he said.

Yet, even then, the ordeal did not end smoothly. Back home, Nanlian discovered his headphones and groceries missing from the backseat, items he claimed disappeared only after the officers entered his car.

“I put two-and-two together and realised they had taken my things,” he said, a claim we could not independently verify. “But at that point, I just let the matter go. Where was I going to start from?” 

The sense of helplessness he expressed seemed to be a recurring thing for many drivers. It didn’t matter if it was a plate number scanning or a physical search; one thing is clear: many of Abuja’s motorists feel slighted by the city’s vehicle inspection system.

When HumAngle contacted the VIO spokesperson with these allegations, he pushed back. Kalu argued that the problem lay less with officers and more with the motorists. 

“We’ve been having these accusations that our people collect their own share,” he told HumAngle. “But you know, people frame the story the way they want. What the present managers of the directorate are doing now is ensuring that technology takes over most of the activities. For example, if you are fined and told where you are going to pay, you wouldn’t have any reason to blame the person who stopped you because you’ve been given a specific government-owned account to pay into.”

Yet, for drivers like Hadiza, Daniel, and Nanlian, the gap between promise and practice remains wide. If nothing changes, more motorists may teeter to the extreme that Hadiza did when asked how she plans to handle driving in Abuja, sometimes abandoning their cars altogether and risking the city’s notorious “one-chance” cabs.

“I can’t lie to you,” she breathed out in frustration, “I think I now hate driving.” 

Names marked with an asterisk (*) have been changed to protect the identities of sources.

Aminu Ishaku now earns a living as a commercial motorcyclist in Abuja.

His family has five hectares of land in Chadari, a farming village in Kano State’s Makoda Local Government Area, North West Nigeria, where they once planted maize, sorghum, and millet, crops that fed and earned them some money.

Until 2021, the land never failed them completely. Some years, it brought 10 bags of sorghum, seven of millet, and nine of maize. 

That year, Aminu borrowed ₦300,000 ($196) and walked into another season with faith. 

“There was rain,” said the 22-year-old. “Everything germinated beautifully. We even added manure to help them grow faster. We were expecting more because of how well they sprouted.”

But the rains stopped. And for two long months, nothing fell from the sky. The young crops dried, devastating the family. No irrigation system, no borehole, no motorised pump. Just the soil and their hopes.

When the rains eventually returned, they planted again. But the second harvest was nothing close to what they needed. 

“That was when I told my father I would go look for work,” Aminu said. 

It was his first time leaving Kano. With only ₦2,000 ($1.31) to cover transport, Aminu, who had just finished secondary school, travelled 12 hours by road to Abuja, arriving on the outskirts of Apo, a district in the Abuja Municipal Area Council (AMAC), where the city asphalt gives way to dust.

“That is where I settled,” he said.

Each year, he returns briefly during the planting season, hoping things will be different. But it has not been.

“In 2022, there was another drought,” he said. “Then, insects attacked the crops. They grew, but the insects destroyed them. The dry spell made them vulnerable.”

In late 2023, the problem worsened. 

There was flooding, said Aminu. Water swallowed homes and farmlands, and crops that survived the dry spell perished under the flood. 

“That caused food shortages,” he said. “Those whose crops did not drown had to harvest early.”

“We barely had enough to eat, let alone sell,” Aminu added. “That is why I stay in Abuja to work, to support the family.”

Aminu is one of the many young men fleeing the slow violence of environmental breakdown in Northern Nigeria. For some, like 30-year-old Abdulhamid Sulaiman, the journey began earlier. Abdulhamid left Danja, a farming town in Katsina State, in 2014, long before climate change became synonymous with rural poverty.

“Rain would disappear in the middle of the season,” he said. “The crops would grow weak. Then insects would come. Sometimes they ate the maize from inside.”

When he married, his father gave him four hectares of land, where he planted maize and tomatoes.

In good years, he harvested five to 10 bags of maize and earned up to ₦250,000 ($164) from tomatoes. But the rains changed. 

“The harvest could not last us till the following season,” he said. “And I did not have another job.”

Groundwater began to seep from the earth during the rainy season, soaking parts of his farm and stalling growth. 

He did not know why. 

“It just kept coming up, slowly, like it was rising from underneath,” he told me.

So, like Aminu, he left.

Idris Sale’s story is no different. In 2015, he left Kano for Abuja after repeated seasons of dwindling millet and cassava harvests. As food dwindled, he began searching for alternative survival means for his family.

These are not isolated stories. They are early signals of a broader shift.

A 2021 study warned that climate-induced migration could surge in states like Sokoto, Zamfara, and Katsina by 2050 under worsening environmental conditions. Northern Nigeria is already losing up to 350,000 hectares of arable land each year to desertification, a crisis that the United Nations estimates costs the country $5 billion annually in lost livelihoods.

On-the-ground reporting confirms this trend. In July, HumAngle showed how desertification and the shrinking of migration corridors are intensifying farmer-herder conflicts across the region. A 2022 investigation highlighted similar tensions in Yobe, while a 2024 story detailed how desertification continues to consume livelihoods in the Northeast. 

In the same month, Balarabe Abbas Lawal, the Minister of Environment, disclosed that 50 to 75 per cent of the land across Bauchi, Borno, Gombe, Jigawa, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Sokoto, Yobe, and Zamfara States was now degraded, some of it permanently.

The ripple effects are devastating. The UN World Food Programme (WFP) ranks Nigeria as the country with the second-highest number of food-insecure people globally. 

In the first six months of 2025, nearly 31 million people faced acute hunger, another WFP report states. The burden falls disproportionately on children. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), an international non-governmental organisation working in conflict zones, reported that in Katsina alone, 652 children died of severe malnutrition in just six months.

The structural vulnerability is clear. Roughly 80 per cent of northern farmers are smallholders who grow over 90 per cent of the country’s food. Yet, most lack irrigation, climate-resilient seeds, or access to state support. As environmental shocks multiply, subsistence agriculture is collapsing beneath them.

Life on the fringes

Aminu now lives in Apo, Abuja. He came here chasing the stories he had heard from others back in Chadari, that the capital held promise for those willing to work. But like many climate migrants arriving from the north, he quickly realised that without formal education or connections, the only available work was in the city’s informal economy.

“When I first came, I worked at construction sites,” he recalled. 

He moved from one project to another, saving steadily until he could add to the little money he had left behind at home.

Eventually, he bought a motorcycle and started working as a commercial rider (an okada man), shuttling passengers along the busy Galadimawa-Garki-Apo corridor. 

“I was making about ₦15,000 [$9.80] daily,” he said.

Out of that, he regularly sent between ₦10,000 ($6.52) and ₦15,000 home weekly.

The outskirts of Abuja have become a magnet for climate migrating northern youths, who join the 93 per cent of employed Nigerians working in the informal sector.

But the city is not always welcoming.

“My first bike was seized by the VIO [Vehicle Inspection Officers],” Aminu alleged. “I had the papers, but I could not get it back.” 

With no income, he returned to construction work and farming during the rainy season. After a year, he scraped together enough to buy another motorcycle, this time at a discount. That one would be stolen. 

“Now I use a friend’s bike,” he said. “I ride during the day and pay him a return each evening.”

Despite better earnings, the stress wears on Aminu. 

“I am making more money here,” he said, “but I have more peace of mind back home.”

His frustrations echo a broader pattern of tension between informal workers and city authorities. Multiple reports have documented how commercial motorcycle riders in Abuja face routine harassment, extortion, and crackdowns, sometimes sparking violent clashes. In April, the Directorate of Road Traffic Services (DRTS) crushed over 600 impounded motorcycles, enforcing a Federal Capital Territory (FCT) regulation that prohibits their operation in designated areas.

Abdulhamid’s story took a different turn. When he first left Danja in Katsina, he arrived in Zuba, another edge community in the FCT, where a few acquaintances from home had already settled. 

“I spent five days looking for work,” he recalled. “When I couldn’t find anything, I returned home.”

But hardship forced him back. This time, he found work as a manual sand miner. 

“We go from stream to stream, in different communities, digging sand by hand,” he said. 

On a good day, he earns between ₦6,000 ($3.91) and ₦12,000 ($7.83). From that, about ₦2,100 ($1.37) goes into daily transport and meals. 

“I send at least ₦10,000 [$6.52] every two days to my family,” he said.

“The sand is heavy, and the places are hilly. It is dangerous climbing up and down with it,” Abdulhamid added.

Worse, he has no idea the work he does may be worsening the climate crisis he fled. 

Their only point of contact with the authorities is the farmers who own land near the riverbanks. 

“Nobody from the government has ever questioned us,” he said. 

“We just pay them [the farmers] ₦1,000 per truck of sand.”

But unregulated sand mining is accelerating erosion, destabilising riverbanks, and contributing to downstream flooding, especially in flood-prone areas like the FCT. HumAngle has documented how unchecked mining in Kano destroyed farmland and made seasonal floods deadlier. A similar report shows the issue in Ogun State, South West Nigeria. 

Abdulhamid shrugged. “The sand brings fast money, but we don’t know it’s part of why floods are worse.”

A 2022 UNEP study estimates that 50 billion tonnes of sand are extracted globally each year. In Nigeria, much of this is done illegally and manually, depleting aquifers, degrading river ecosystems, and displacing communities. Ironically, the work Abdulhamid now relies on contributes to the flooding and food shortages that pushed him out of Danja.

Idris Sale’s path was steadier. Since arriving in Abuja from Kano in 2015, he has moved between carpentry and construction labour. 

“On a good day, I make ₦10,000 [$6.52],” he said. 

He saves about ₦7,000 ($4.57) and sends up to ₦20,000 ($13.6) home weekly. 

“There are more job opportunities here,” he said. “I do not get that kind of money in Makoda.”

His main challenge is not the police or permits, but broken promises. 

“Sometimes, they don’t pay me at all,” he said. “Or they give less than we agreed. They just keep postponing it.”

Still, Idris believes the move has been worthwhile. 

“My life has changed,” he said. “Back home, farming was failing. There was no other way to earn.” 

Despite the setbacks, he sees his situation improving. But his shelter is now under threat. Since late 2023, Abuja’s city administration, under FCT Minister Nyesom Wike, has launched a sweeping demolition campaign, targeting informal settlements in what it calls a clean-up and security initiative. Dozens of communities have been levelled.

These demolished neighbourhoods used to shelter many climate immigrants.

According to UN-Habitat, a significant portion of Abuja’s population lives in informal settlements. They are not criminals or squatters, but part of the shadow workforce that keeps the city running. They dig its foundations, ferry its passengers, and haul its waste.

What policies ignore

Aminu has lived through the shifting seasons. He has felt the searing heat, watched the rains falter, and struggled through the floods. But he cannot explain them. 

“Maybe it is the cultivation that drives the rain,” he said. “Before you plant, there will be rain. But after you plant, it will seize.”

Abdulhamid, too, notices the changes. The dry spells have become harsher. But when asked what causes them, he admits, “I have no idea.” 

His family, like others in his community, now relies on a hand-dug well to water crops during dry periods. “An exhausting process with limited results,” he said.

Neither has access to irrigation tools or drought-resistant seeds. Climate change may not be in their vocabulary, but erratic rainfall, failed harvests, livelihood losses, and migration define their lives.

While Aminu and Abdulhamid have quietly adapted by digging wells or leaving home, Nigeria’s climate strategies have not. The country’s policy documents, from the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to the National Adaptation Plan, emphasise mitigation: solar energy, reforestation, and emission cuts. But they say little about rural youths like Aminu and Abdulhamid, those forced to migrate not by armed conflict, but by empty fields and dead crops.

The National Adaptation Plan warns of climate risks to agriculture. But it says little about the migration of young people, or the pressure that climate displacement places on informal urban economies.

Meanwhile, data paints a clearer picture. Climate-related displacements across Africa have surged sixfold since 2009, reaching 6.3 million people in 2023. While floods remain the main driver, drought-related migration is accelerating. Nigeria alone recorded over 6 million people displaced by climate events between 2008 and 2021. Yet adaptation funds rarely follow them to the cities where they resettle.

In Abuja, planning documents acknowledge flood threats, but not the steady influx of rural migrants building lives on the fringes. There is no policy for them. No targeted relief. No plan to absorb or empower.

“We are mostly farmers in Chidari,” Aminu said. “And it is rainfed farming. We cannot afford to dig boreholes in our farms, and our politicians did not construct any for us.” 

He is not bitter, just resigned. “During the dry season, we are jobless. Some youths join politics as thugs. Others, like me, leave for the city.”

Aminu says he would return to farming in Chidari if he had access to irrigation tools, fertilisers, and pesticides. Otherwise, he sees himself remaining in Abuja’s informal economy or joining the military. “I have applied several times,” he said, “but ha’ve never been selected.”

Abdulhamid, too, says he would stay in his village if empowered with climate-smart farming tools. 

“I love my village,” he said. “But the hardship and responsibilities were what made me leave.” 

He wishes those in government would come and see what their policies overlook. 

“If I could talk to them, I would ask them to visit the villages during the rainy season. Let them see what we go through,” he said.