Lack of Physical Planning Responsible for Farmers-Herdsmen Clashes, Says NITP

Oghenevwede Ohwovoriole in Abuja

The Nigerian Institute of Town Planners (NITP) has attributed communal clashes and farmers-herdsmen conflicts over ownership of land to lack of physical planning.

The National President of NITP, Mr. Olutoyin Ayinde made this remarks at a news conference in Abuja, noting that now “is the time to plan and act.”

Ayinde, a former Commissioner of Physical Planning and Urban Development in Lagos, said the clashes did not happen in the early days of the country simply because the population was small.

NITP’s president revealed that failure to adhere to existing physical planning policies and improve on it “is the reason Nigeria has been having all these crises today.

“All of these clashes had never existed when our population was low. It seemed that our land resource was inexhaustible. Now that reality has dawned, we even have less land resource to ascribe to the Nigerian territory.

“We have lost Bakassi to Cameroon. This added to the consequences of climate change. There is the obvious necessity to manage this scarce resource. The only way to manage a scarce resource is to plan it.”

He explained that the scarcity of this resource and the desperate need to have it “have triggered many inter-communal clashes between communities that have lived together for several centuries without any clash.

“The frequency of the farmers-herdsmen conflict, which has not abated, further underscores the importance of land in economic and physical development,” he said.

He, therefore, appealed to all governments “to implement the National Urban and Regional Planning Law. The reality about physical planning is that we either plan or perish.

“It is the responsibility of governments all over the world to plan, while it is the duty of town planners to make their acquired knowledge in the art and science of town planning, as well as applied wisdom available to put government plans into a workable blueprint to guide the physical and economic development of human settlements.”

He said town planning “answers to good governance relating to government policies, and so in the absence of policies that favour community development, there would be no efficient physical planning.

“The law prescribes the various hierarchies of plans meant to be prepared at federal, state and local levels, with the relevant institutions to ensure the success of the implementation of the Law.

“It was required also that every state of the federation would domesticate the Law to enhance physical planning and human settlements development in the states and local areas.

“The experience is that the framework at the federal level is yet to be implemented while the preparation of the national physical development plan is still a dream.

“The states too have different outcomes, which can be classified into a number of categories. It is important to state that none is perfect yet, but they definitely not at the same levels of compliance.”