Despite the fact that the military leaders of Nigeria justified the construction of the capital at Abuja with the idea of providing the center of unity, violence continues to rock the stability of the nation long after it was inaugurated on 12 December 1991. The spate of violence in the country since the inauguration raises a number of questions that Dr Elleh will address in this talk. Many post colonial capital cities and provincial seats of government have certain things in common. They were planned after wars and revolutions (L. Vale 1992); the leaders who commissioned them and the designers intended the civic and public spaces in the cities to be centers of “democracy” and “emancipation”.  To achieve these goals, the designers embraced the late-18th century monumental city building model like Washington, D.C. Dr. Elleh will use the Abuja project and a few examples from Morocco, Ghana, the Ivory Coast, Tanzania and South Africa to examine these postcolonial projects.