Urbanization in Abuja and its environs was largely due to the movement of the Federal Capital Territory to
Abuja in 1991 causing the influx of internal/national and international migrants and natural increase of
birth rate over mortality. This increase has not only put pressure on the city (Abuja) but the surrounding
settlements by posing a threat to the limited resources thereby resulting to high cost of living. Abuja city
was planned for limited people as opposed to what is obtained now. The research set out to measure the
changes in landmass or landuse/landcover and population increase in the study area. Multi-date Satellite
images of 1987, 1999 and 2007 (Landsat TM, Landsat ETM and Nigeriasat 1) were acquired from National
Centre for Remote sensing Jos and used in analyzing the physical expansion of the city overtime. Using
supervised classification algorithm, the images were classified into built up, rock-outcrop, vegetation and
water bodies and used to carry out change detection or time series analysis. In addition, coordinates of
locations in the area were obtained using a GPS while figures from National Population Commission were
used. Change detection analysis was carried out on the imageries to obtain the physical expansion of the
area. Using change detection method, it was found that the builtup area increased from 8% in 1987 to 22%
in 2007, rock-outcrop decreased from 74% to 37%, vegetation decreased from 40% to 17%, while the area
occupied by water body has remained constant overtime. Also projection was done for population in the
next nine years and 1,925,464.089 figures which are about 37% is expected. To support this increase in
population and physical growth rate observed, constant monitoring of the urban growth is required to be
sustained by anthropogenic activities.