*Seek rural development to save city centres

By Caleb Ayansina

THE UN Deputy Secretary-General, Housing and Sustainable Urban, Kumaresh Misra and other stakeholders in the ongoing United Nations Habitat III Africa Regional Meeting in Nigeria, last week called on African leaders to develop rural areas to solve challenges of urban cities in the continent.

Misra at the opening of the technical session of the meeting in Abuja emphasised the need for effective planning to manage rural urban migration, attributing importance of urbanisation to reason it was listed in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).

He explained that cities of developing nations, especially Nigeria, should develop counter measures ahead of increasing population in the country.

Great challenges

“This region has shown great progress and also has great potential but also offers great challenges as we see a sharp increase in especially urban population. There is need to manage the cities to meet 2030 sustainable development to make cities safe, inclusive, resilient and sustainable.

“We need integrated approach to manage new cities as agent of growth not only in terms of housing or security but to make it viable for economic sustainability.

“Prosperity of nations is intimately linked to the prosperity of cities in the current scenario. It is necessary to recognize and integrate all aspects of human settlement which will contribute towards greater social cohesion, promote innovation and truly build an inclusive and dynamic society.

“It is necessary to take early and coordinated action. If sometimes the planning of Manhattan is appreciated, it must be remembered that it was planned nearly 200 years ago,” Misra said.

The Nigeria Permanent
Representative to UN Habitat, Akin Oyateru reiterated the need for government and other stakeholders to put more efforts on planning to meet development.

He called for extensive planning of city years ahead its expansion, adding that provision of affordable housing and all inclusive development would reduce rural urban migration.

“One of the new programmes is urban approach, activities that would change the imbalance and decongest the city centre. The New Urban Agenda is a new multi sectoral approach where urbanisation is looked from a holistic approach to drive sustainable developmental policies that would benefit the masses,” he said.

Technical session

Declaring the technical session of the meeting open, the Minister of State for Power, Work and Housing, Mr. Mustapha Baba Shehuri said the situation in urban cities across the continent was not encouraging, promising that the federal government would redouble its efforts to address the situation.

He said; “Urbanization is virtually on a rampage across this continent and its attendant crushing consequences are so glaring. There is debilitating urban poverty and most of the emerging cities are not functional economically or otherwise.

“Regrettably, past attempts and strategies employed to ameliorate the situation showed no visible success. This conference, therefore, offers us a distinctive prospect to propose African situation in the new Urban Agenda”, Shehuri noted.