Abuja - Post Report Question and Answers
What are the particular advantages of living in this city?
Abuja's a planned city with good roads and amazing geography. There are shuttles to and from work, and there's plenty to do. Much less chaotic than Lagos -- especially the airport. It's fine. - Jun 2024
Sun. - Feb 2019
You can definitely save money if you don't go crazy on your R&Rs. - Apr 2018
Pre-K and young kids can play freely on the compounds - Apr 2017
Remember, this is Africa, so it's a bit easier to get to those spots you want see in Europe. I guess I'm reaching a bit. - Jun 2016
Successfully completing an assignment in Nigeria will instill the confidence that you can handle almost anything. The work is very important and gets a lot of attention back in Washington --- do well, and people will notice. There is very little worth spending your money on, so we saved up a lot of money. If you are Foreign Service, you get three R&Rs, which people have used for some pretty spectacular vacations. There is almost no tourism industry of note in Nigeria, but that didn't stop someone from buying one of those big, red CitySightSeeing tour buses (really?). - Aug 2015
None - Jun 2015
There are no advantages to living here except for saving money (danger pay, hardship etc.). The weather is OK, very hot in winter, very wet and medium temperatures during the rainy season. - Nov 2014
None. Abuja is a new city, built to be the capital city of Nigeria. The process started some time ago and will be years before it is complete. You can't travel outside the city without Embassy RSO permission and you will travel in convoy with local Police in the vehicle. Nigeria is a high threat post, anyone posted here has to attend the FACT thru FSI. Given the current situation with Boko Haram and ebola, there are several State Department issued travel warning. On top of that, there are not a lot of places to go for any reason. Some people will fly to Lagos for a weekend, just to see something different. Travel is expensive, not a lot of local art/crafts - so you can save money. If you don't spend it all on comfort shopping online. - Aug 2014
Easy place to save money (unless you spend it all traveling out), weather is remarkably good - generally in the 90s and low 100s F all year and not terribly humid even in the rainy season. All expats come here for the challenges of the work. Whether you're working for an NGO or for an Embassy, the work here is fast and furious. Lots of interesting challenges, lots of international stakeholders. - May 2014
Weather is hot but not bad. The diplomatic and expat-NGO worker community is lively and relatively large. Even though activities don't vary too much, there are social events every weekend night and some week nights as well. Making friends outside the expat community is a bit trickier, possibly because the wealthy/political crowd in Abuja is not so exited about hanging out with ex-pats. If your employer/embassy/mission lets you travel outside the city (some do/most do not), you can explore some interseting cities/cultural sites within a few hours drive of Abuja - but kidnappings of expats are on the rise, so take serious precautions. Food and air travel are very expensive, so saving money is not really an option - Lagos is the cheapest flight (still usually over $400), but doing a long weekend there is fun because, compared to Abuja, Lagos feels like New York City! - May 2013
