Abuja is the capital of Nigeria, and it is the city inside the Federal Capital Territory. The territory is not the capital: it is the district that was created to hold one.
Both names are used for the same answer, and the distinction matters for anything official.
Abuja is the city, or more precisely the Federal Capital City: the planned district at the north-east of the territory, with the Aso Rock presidential villa, the National Assembly and the Supreme Court.
The Federal Capital Territory is the roughly 8,000 square kilometre district around it, created in 1976 out of parts of the old Niger, Plateau and Kwara states. It is not a state, has no governor and no state assembly, and is administered by a federal minister answering to the president.
So Abuja is the capital of Nigeria. The FCT is the district that contains it, sitting where a state would sit in the hierarchy: a division, with the city inside it. Anything official — an address, a court, a ministry — uses whichever of the two names the thing actually belongs to, and they are not interchangeable.
The Federal Capital Territory Administration, headed by the Minister of the FCT. Underneath it are six area councils, and the one that covers the built city is the Abuja Municipal Area Council. That is the closest thing Abuja has to a local government of its own.
There was a town called Abuja before the capital was built. When the territory took the name in 1976, the town was renamed Suleja, and it is now in Niger State, just outside the territory's northern boundary. It is still often confused with the capital, and it is a different place.
The places above come from GeoNames, reconciled against Wikidata. Last checked 21 September 2026. How we know · Suggest a correction