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Just like other communities in Abuja Municipal Area Council (AMAC) of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Kpeyegyi community cannot be exempted from those communities yearning for basic amenities.

A walk through the community shows pictures that tell the story of a community long neglected.

Bad roads, broken down make-shift bridges, streets littered with refuse, absence of a health care facility, no proper drainage and toilet systems as well as other sundry indices of under development are the landmarks in the community.

Kpeyegyi community is located after Jikwoyi community in Orozo Ward of AMAC.

It portrays a community that has for long not felt the presence of government, with the residents living in total denial.

To most residents of Kpeyegyi, the FCT administration has done little or nothing to improve the living standards of the people in the community.

The only amenity the people of the community can boast of is power supply which they said is not consistent, as the two power transformers provided to serve the community are inadequate.

Crime rate is also high in the community and is worsened by the absence of a police station or police out-post in the community.

Residents told LEADERSHIP that it is difficult for people to sleep with their two eyes closed in the community as criminals have completely stolen their peace.

The Galadima of the community, Peche Gagara, who spoke on behalf of the Sa Kpeyegi, Chief Afabwa Joseph Dakwoyi, lamented that the community had been neglected by most administrations.

He said development had eluded the area because the area council paid no attention to it as if it were not part of it.

“This community is very big and there are more than 4000 people here. We see development in most communities in AMAC but the truth is that this development is far from our community. Apart from electricity, nothing much has been done by this administration or previous ones on the issue of development and improving our living standards.

“The only time you see our political leaders is when elections are drawing near. They come to us with promises to make us vote for them,” he said.?

He also lamented that despite the size of the community and the large population of people there, the area council only deemed it fit to provide two solar bore holes for the community, forcing the people to fall back on wells for their water needs.

According to Gagara, the two solar water boreholes often proved inefficient to meet the water needs of the community especially when the solar panels fail to conserve enough solar power during the day.

“It is believed that water is life but can you imagine that the only water source provided to this community by AMAC are two water boreholes, and most times we use well water well to meet our domestic needs. We know it is unhygienic and bad for our health but we are constrained. If not for some people that dug boreholes by themselves, we would have been looking for streams to get water from for domestic use,” he added.

The Galadima Kpeyegi also flayed the inability of the government to provide a police station in the community, saying the absence of one had provided a good opportunity for crime and criminality to thrive in the community.

“We do not have a police post not to talk of a police station in this community. I believe that any government that is fighting crime should ensure that there is enough security system in most local communities, because that is where most criminals emanate from. But Kpeyegyi is different, as big as this community is, people live in fear because the security situation is not under check.

“Bad boys are almost everywhere in this community, if not for our collective efforts to ensure the security of lives and property, only God knows what would have become of this community,” he added.

Gagara called on the leadership of AMAC, under Hon. Micah Jiba, to do more for the community, saying even if development were to be based on how much vote he got from the communities, Kpeyegyi would not be left out as it is one of the communities that supported and voted massively for him during his election.

An indigene of Kpeyegyi, Maikeffi Moses Busa, did not hide his disappointment at the complete neglect of the community.

He said that despite the continuous influx of people into the community, including non-indigenes, the government had paid it no attention.

He lamented that previous administrations had not impacted anything positive in the lives of residents and indigenes in the community, saying that most of the youths were jobless, a situation he attributed to the high level of criminal activities in the area.

“We have countless numbers of youth in this community but the council does not really care about them. If the council cared about them, I believe something like skills acquisition centres would be set up in this community to empower most of the youths to make life worth living for them. But today in Kpeyegyi, that is not so, most of the youths roam about the community, looking for means of survival.

“On the aspect of health centre, which is supposed to be our right the situation is so bad our pregnant women and little children have to go to Jikwoyi community to use their health centre which is even too small to cater for their own community and that is not good for us. We need a health center in this community and government has not given us even one health clinic in this community,” he said.

Busa further stated that the community had written to the council severally on the issue of a health centre in the last 10 years but nothing had been done.

He appealed to the area council administration to extend development to the area especially in the areas of health and access roads “Because it is good as a leader when your good works speak for you.”