Chidi Ugwu, Professor of Urban and Regional Planning and former Vice Chancellor of the Enugu State University of Technology, ESUT and Consultant to UNDP as well as various state governments on development of sustainable cities,   in this interview,   spoke on development of sustainable cities in Nigeria and the need to check rural – urban drift, calling on President Muhammadu Buhari to address housing deficit in Nigeria, among other issues. Excerpt:

By Ugochukwu Alaribe

WORKING experience in Nigeria joined the Enugu State University of Science and Technology and have served as Head of Department,

Prof-Ugwu

Dean of the faculty, Dean of Post-graduate School, and Director of school planning as well as the Vice Chancellor of the university. Currently I am a contract staff of the university, a consultant to United Nations Development Programme, UNDP, on developing sustainable cities, a consultant to the Enugu State government on master planning, and also a consultant to the Ebonyi State government.

Building sustainable cities in Nigeria

As it is in Nigeria, our cities are not sustainable because the rural areas are under-developed with little presence of social amenities, thereby resulting in the mass exodus of rural dwellers to urban areas which on their own have become overcrowded. In UNDP, our focus is building cities where such problems highlighted above are minimized.

Take for instance, at the university where I was in charge of physical development, I would tell the management of the institution what plot of land was suitable for a particular project.

Danger to the economy

This tells you that there are lands suitable for building roads while there are those meant for agriculture, but it seems Nigeria has no knowledge of these facts, leading to indiscriminate locations of projects. This portends great danger to the economy of the nation.

According to the dictates of my profession, which is also the practice in notable countries of the world, urban and regional planning begins by planning and developing the rural communities, taking government closer to the people. This is what previous governments neglected that President Muhammadu Buhari should look into. As it is in Nigeria, our rural communities have been associated with under-development; people have refused to go back to the villages because there are no electricity supply, no clean water, no motorable roads, and so on. Sustainable cities are cities that are planned with indices with population growth in mind

How has lack of sustainable cities affected Nigeria’s growth?

When the number of people in our cities exceeds what that city could take, the cost of living will become very high and near unattainable; this leads to the indiscriminate location of houses on drainages, and places that are mapped out as roads. As a result of the over-crowded nature of the town, employment opportunities become much fewer than the people in search of them. This promotes corruption such as employment scams.

Now when people, especially university graduates, remain unemployed for a protracted period, crime becomes very alluring. Take for instance, why would a three-bedroom apartment rent go for about N2 million in Abuja metropolis when there are rural communities which still sell a plot of land for less than N2, 000?

Unfortunately, even in the rural communities there are several taboos going on unchecked as regards the land use, but these are areas I believe the President should address. Under President Buhari, I am optimistic that small scale industries will move towards rural areas so that these places will open up the way for the change that All Progressives Congress, APC, has promised; particularly the incidence of rural-urban migration needs to be checked.

What should be done to address housing deficit in Nigeria?

To solve the housing deficit in Nigeria, we have to revert to due process in the area of urban planning. For instance when you take a look at our housing estates, you will discover that all the houses look alike, this should not be, rather our estates ought to accommodate all classes of people beginning from families that would want a duplex, a bungalow, a three- bedroom flat and even a single room space.

Take a look at several estates built by government for civil servants all over the country, most of them are unoccupied because the houses were not built according to their specific needs. If you ask me, government is not supposed to invest in housing, but to provide conducive environment for banks, insurance and individuals to invest in the housing sector.

At this time of our nation, we should have realized that land is not an infinite commodity; we should start looking upwards like other nations. By looking upwards I mean conserving the little land available by erecting skyscrapers that could contain more offices, homes and banks

The task before President Buhari

As a country, we need to flush out corruption from the housing sector, we need to clear up all those houses built on drainages and ensure all our drainage systems are unblocked, otherwise we will keep seeing intense flooding like the ones that took place under the immediate past administration of Goodluck Jonathan which saw billions of property and agriculture lost.

Property andagriculture

We need to review the Land Use Act. State governments and individuals have continued to acquire lands for personal gains under the guise that it was meant for commercial purposes. Very important, we need to take a look at the inheritance of land as practised in most traditions in our country; I think it needs to be erased, it has giving birth to a whole lot of bloodletting between families and communities.

Confidence in President Buhari’s administration

Since 2003, Buhari has been in the race for the presidency, I have never voted for him, but in 2015, I decided voting for him against President Goodluck Jonathan was the proper thing to do and my reason was that for a man of his age to tirelessly seek the presidency and spend enormous resources in the process, starting all over again after being rigged out, such a person must have been motivated by a good purpose.

So I voted for him at the presidential elections. Now, I have faith in him because I see him as a much disciplined Nigerian. I urge him to heed to the dictates of urban and regional planning in order to bring change to the entire housing sector. The corruption that has infested the housing sector needs someone like Buhari to tackle. The selling off of government lands by government officials needs to stop. Nigerians need to know that houses should not be built on drainages. They also need to know that we can build our own Dubai here in Nigeria.