Spatial Justice, Infrastructural Citizenship, and the Right to the City in Peri-Urban Settlements of Abuja Federal Capital Territory

The peri-urban settlements of Abuja Federal Capital Territory in Nigeria's North Central geopolitical zone occupy a paradoxical urban position: providing essential labour and housing for the national capital's economy while being systematically excluded from formal urban citizenship, infrastructure investment, and planning recognition in ways that reproduce spatial injustices inscribed in the FCT's original colonial and post-colonial planning conception. This study theorises and empirically investigates spatial justice, infrastructural citizenship, and the right to the city in peri-urban settlements of the FCT, developing original conceptual frameworks applicable to planned capital cities in Sub-Saharan Africa. The theoretical framework integrates Lefebvre's right to the city, Holston's insurgent citizenship, and spatial justice theory within a postcolonial African urbanism lens to conceptualise peri-urban residents as peripheral urban citizens whose claims to urban rights are institutionally delegitimised. Research was conducted over 22 months using ethnographic methods including participant observation, 110 life history interviews with peri-urban residents and urban governance actors, analysis of FCDA planning court cases and demolition orders, and participatory community mapping in eight peri-urban settlements. Geospatial analysis quantifies infrastructure provision disparities between peri-urban settlements and planned districts using satellite imagery, building footprint analysis, and government infrastructure expenditure records. Results demonstrate that peri-urban residents have developed sophisticated vernacular practices of infrastructural self-provisioning that constitute a form of insurgent citizenship challenging the FCT's formal planning apparatus. Demolition and forced relocation events are documented as instruments of territorial violence systematically deployed against peri-urban communities with insufficient political protection. The study produces original theoretical contributions to African urban political geography and citizenship geography. Keywords: spatial justice, right to the city, peri-urban, Abuja, North Central Nigeria.