ABUJA, Nigeria -- Quickly, what is the capital of Nigeria?

Lagos?

Wrong.

It is this unlikely place, an oasis of calm in a chaotic nation, a center of development amid economic collapse, an area of urban space in Africa's most populous country, a self-proclaimed "city of unity" for a fragmented society.

Abuja is custom-built, the ultimate politically correct capital, slap-bang in the middle of the nation where all 108 million Nigerians can get to it with equal difficulty.

This is the Brasilia of Africa, an architectural playground on the eve of the 21st century, where the skyline is dotted with almost as many construction cranes as occupied buildings.

It is a work in progress. The pink, cream and white office blocks are so new that they have yet to be weathered, a slow process anyway in the dry heat and clean air of the savanna.

There's an elaborate new presidential palace for Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo, the former military strongman who was elected a week ago to be the nation's first civilian head of state in 15 years.

The one that the last civilian president, Shehu Shagari, started to build didn't make the grade with the military that ousted him in 1983. It stands unfinished, a concrete shell to be used eventually for some undesignated government purpose.

A new National Assembly with a Capitol-like dome -- an environmentally correct bright green -- is nearing completion for the members elected in the recent voting. So is a new pink-walled federal secretariat.

The broad highways that cross the city are all but empty. The overriding impression is of a model town in the middle of nowhere on a Sunday afternoon.

Abuja's population is already a million and is slated to reach 3 million by the time the city is completed early next century. But people are lost in an area 2 1/2 times as large as Lagos, the former capital and teeming home to 14 million.

The intolerable living and transportation conditions in Lagos drove the politicians to seek a new, more pleasant, more congenial place of work, literally far from the madding crowd.

"There's a lot of space here, very much unlike Lagos," says Ikoku Okonkwo, assistant information director for the capital in his cluttered office in Federal Capital Territory building, a surprisingly dowdy concrete block from which to oversee such sparkling enterprise all around. "The development here is planned, very much unlike Lagos."

Lagos, on the coast, was the capital of both state and country. But it was running out of room for expansion, was vulnerable to attack from the sea, and was dominated by a single ethnic group, the Yorubas, making it sometimes less than welcoming to outsiders like the Hausa-Fulani from the north, or the Ibo people of the east.

In August 1975, Nigeria's military head of state, Gen. Ramat Murtala Muhammed, appointed a seven-man panel to examine the possibility of creating a new capital, and, if it was judged feasible, to come up with a site.

Four months later the committee recommended building a new capital that would be secure, ethnically neutral, centrally located, with a healthy and tolerable climate.

They looked at Auchi, Okene, Osara, Kafanchan, Makurid, Agena, Buga, Ife and Agege before they chose Abuja.

Here, they selected a 35,000-square-mile plot of virgin land so that only a few local inhabitants would have to be relocated at government expense. To avoid speculation, the land was vested in the federal government.

Announcing the decision to leave Lagos for Abuja in a 1976 broadcast, Muhammed said: "We believe that the new capital created on such virgin land will be for all Nigerians a symbol of their oneness and unity."

Says an official guidebook: "Since Nigeria has the largest concentration of black men worldwide, it is safe to state that Abuja, on full throttle, will be the largest black capital on earth."

It took 15 years to turn the vision into reality. First the basic institutions of civic life -- houses, apartment blocks, schools, police stations and courts -- were built.

Government agencies started relocating from Lagos in 1986, with the ministries of internal affairs, trade and industry leading the way.

Initially, civil servants were reluctant to leave the bustle and excitement of Lagos, accusing the government of "rushing" the development. To overcome the resistance, the government had to impose deadlines for the relocation of ministries.

Abuja officially became the capital of Nigeria on Dec. 12, 1991. Less than a decade later all the major federal agencies have moved here.

To ease its loss, Lagos, gateway for colonial settlement of Nigeria from 1861, capital of united Nigeria since 1914, and scene of the lowering of the British Union Jack in 1960, was promised additional government development funding. Today it remains the commercial capital of the country, a place in a constant state of suspension between vibrancy and chaos.

And, despite the departure of the legion of federal bureaucrats, its streets are now more jammed than ever with traffic, its sidewalks more crowded, its market places busier.

Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, another former military head of state, said during the official ceremony marking the 1991 transfer of federal power to Abuja: "Lagos remains the hub of our national economy, our largest seaport, our most important link with the outside world.

"At once cosmopolitan and metropolitan," the general continued, "the city has for long been a veritable melting pot for Nigeria, and, for many of us, the crucible in which many rewarding cross-cultural relationships were forged. Indeed, we shall miss Lagos."

Certainly the contrast between the old and new capitals could hardly be more stark.

Lagos remains a place Nigerians choose to love or hate, but Abuja is a capital of which they can all be truly proud -- even if most never manage to set a foot in it.

Pub Date: 3/08/99