The smoke in her kitchen had a name. For years, that was just how cooking worked. Firewood.
Charcoal. Kerosene.
The fumes sat low, right at a child’s breathing height. Mothers coughed. Toddlers wheezed.
It was a fact of life in many parts of the Federal Capital Territory. That fact is changing for 10,000 families now.
On Thursday, at the Bwari Mini Stadium, the Federal Capital Territory Administration and IHS Nigeria finished handing out free Liquefied Petroleum Gas cylinders and refill vouchers. Eighteen communities across all six Area Councils of the FCT got the kits. The program, Project Breathe Clean Air Abuja, started in November 2025.
IHS Nigeria paid for it. The people getting the cylinders are the ones who needed them most. Women cook the meals.
Children stay near the fire. The smoke hits them first and hardest.
Mariya Mahmud, the Minister of State for the FCT, said the project was built to cut the number of respiratory diseases tied to indoor air pollution. She was represented at the ceremony by Maijida Kuku. Women and children carry the heaviest burden from cooking smoke, she said.
Wider LPG use would help public health, protect the environment, and chip in against climate change. Dr. Adedolapo Fasawe, the Mandate Secretary for the FCT Health Services and Environment Secretariat, laid out the reason the project exists.
Cases of respiratory tract infections among women were climbing. Respiratory allergies in children were climbing too. The common thread: long hours breathing smoke from traditional cooking fuels.
That is the human math of it. A mother bent over a three-stone fire for two hours. A toddler crawling in the same room.
The lungs take the damage. Day after day.
The project does not just hand out metal cylinders. It changes the air in those rooms. Beyond the distribution, sustainability teams from the FCTA and IHS Nigeria went into the communities.
They visited local leaders. They taught people how to use gas safely.
That part matters. A cylinder that sits unused because nobody trained the family on it is just a cylinder. The training makes it a tool.
The numbers are plain. Ten thousand families. Eighteen communities.
All six Area Councils. That is a lot of kitchens where the smoke will thin out.
A lot of mornings where a child wakes up without a rattling cough. The ceremony at the Bwari Mini Stadium was the closing event. But the work is not over for the families who took the cylinders home.
They have to learn a new rhythm. Gas cooks faster than firewood.
It burns cleaner. It does not coat the walls with soot. It does not fill the room with fumes that settle into the lungs.
For the women who do the cooking, that is a real change. For the children breathing the air, it is a real change. The smoke had a name.
Now it has less space to exist.
