FLOODING AND PLANNING IN NIGERIAN CITIES

Climate change which has been defined as any long term significant change in the expected patterns of average weather of a specific area over an appropriate period of time is mostly characterized by, sea level rise which directly threatens coastal settlements across the earth. Ice melting especially at the Antartica is one of such which is responsible for sea rise in the first instance. Estimates have it that over 13,000 kilometers of ice has been lost in the past five decades resulting in the severe, unpredictable weather evident in the disturbing irregular rainfall patterns we now experience yearly. 

However, the issue of flooding which is also a manifestation of climate change is the topmost concern in our communities today. But before I continue, I like to emphasize the fact that rainfall is not the only cause of flooding. In Nigeria, our almost absolute disregard for urban and regional planning (town planning) at all levels is significantly responsible for this disaster.

Sometimes in June, 2012, the Nigerian Institute of Town Planners (NITP) and the Town Planners Registration Council of Nigeria (TOPREC) held a Mandatory Continuing Professional Development Programme (MCPDP) at Lokoja in Kogi State. The theme of that edition which happens to be the 14^th in the series was CLIMATE CHANGE: Challenges for Physical Planning in Nigeria. A renowned town planner, Dr. Kingsley C. Ogboi, the Director at the Centre for Environmental Management and Control (CEMAC), University of Nigeria, Enugu campus did first presentation. The title was An Overview of Climate Change: Causes, Processes and Manifestations. His take on flooding got my attention because a couple of my friends and family members reside in an area synonymous with perennial flooding.

Ogboi noted that, “In Nigeria climate change is seriously affecting the hydrological system. Flood risk is becoming a serious challenge to urban (and rural) management in the country. There are growing evidences of flood disaster in the urban centres. For example, in July 2007, heavy rainfall caused a major flood in Ogun State and many houses and bridges along a river bank were washed away, displacing about 472 families and rendering occupants of over 260 houses homeless. In Lagos similar heavy rains in 2011 caused a dam to overflow into neighbouring communities. Some thousand persons were displaced in this incidence. On 26^th August 2011, Ibadan recorded a heavy rainfall which was its highest in five decades. The rainfall on that day hit an all-time high of 187.50mm, accompanied by wind gusts reaching 65 kilometer/hour.”

The highpoint of the presentation was when he said, and I quote, “According to International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) weather data, the rain fell for about 6 hours during which the whole area at the bank of Ogunpa River was flooded….,. in addition to intensive rainfall, the flood was attributed to disregard for town planning rules by developers who erect buildings along canals and drainage channels; and the awful habits of households and enterprises of dumping waste in drainage channels (Momoh, 2011; Sanni, 2011).”

For me, I have always attributed this issue of flooding and bad roads especially in most of our supposed urban areas to. One, our lackadaisical attitude to the construction and the use of drainage channels around our buildings; our penchant for building along disaster prone areas such as flood plains; indiscriminate waste disposal during torrential downpour and low public awareness of existing urban and regional planning laws. Interestingly as a nation, we have a handful of policy documents and laws that ordinarily should form a basis for mitigating the impact of climate change on our immediate environment.

The Nigerian Urban and Regional Planning Act of 2004 is a major example. The law in a nutshell defines and amplifies the need for development plans and development control; it outlines the responsibilities and jurisdictions of federal, state and local governments in the control of development; and in it, a strong case was made for the need to produce a national physical plan for securing integration, consistency and coherence within and between all levels of physical development plans.

The other laws include, the Environmental Impact Assessment Act of 2004 which requires reports and approval for impact of both public and private projects on the environment and establishes cases where impact assessment and reports are required; the National Environmental Standards and Regulation Enforcement Agency Act of 2007 which now replaces the old FEPA Act responsible for protection and sustainable development of the environment and its natural resources; the River Basin Development Authority Act of 2004 which is responsible for the development of water resources, control of flood and erosion; the Federal National Parks Act of 2004 which provides for the establishment of potential areas for resource conservation, water catchment protection, wildlife conservation and the maintenance of national ecosystem balance; the Water Resources Act of 2004 which provides for developing and improving water quality and quantity, pollution prevention plan and regulations, protection of fisheries, flora and fauna.

Sometimes I wonder why we just build the way we do and careless about the grave consequences of our actions. The approval of building designs without adequate provision for greens, parking and proper drainage around such is directly a failure of planning. We spend hundreds of millions to build structures and make little or no provisions for functional drainage systems. And like the saying goes, water will always find its level. If you have observed closely apart from being prone to flooding, communities or streets without proper drainage channels popularly referred to as ‘gutter’ also have bad roads as a result of frequent erosion by un-channeled runoff water anytime there is rain.

I strongly advocate inclusion of drainage system design in building plans as prerequisite for building permits and plan approval by physical planning authorities across the country. There is a need for the adoption of standard drainage channels on a house-to-house basis as a strategy of making neighborhood roads passable and well drained during downpour as a short-term measure before government intervention. The idea here is that at times, especially in our clime, piecemeal approach to immediate planning challenges can be a short term strategy if the comprehensive approach is out of reach.

We need to all agree especially in densely populated urban areas to adopt this street-to-street and house-to-house strategy of constructing standard drainage that have the capacity to effectively carry water during and after rainfall or dam spillage. Every house owner or landlord must be persuade and co-opted to be involved in this approach. Buildings, public, commercial or private must be internally and externally drained. The drains should cover the frontage and sides of buildings especially for corner plots. It is not good enough to think government will come and construct drains in layouts outside of government acquisition. This is one thing we need to do in almost every area especially in cities and towns where flooding is gradually becoming a horrendous.

The need for the enforcement of existing town planning laws is also an important issue that government must push. It is not just enough to make laws; the enforcement aspect should be reinforced and publicized. Locating filling stations, eateries, schools, churches and mosques on canals and drainage channels is wrong. Even the conversion of designated industrial areas for religious and residential use is an anomaly. The privatization and commercialization of green areas and buffers as car parking lots to generate internal revenue is abnormal. Government is the most guilt in this case.

Some people think town planners are insane to have allocated considerable percentage of the land area in all layout designs to greens. Even some people and these include top government officials are not aware that landscaping in planning is not just about planting flowers at every open space in the cities. Landscaping includes maintaining statutory structural setbacks for right-of-way, construction of walkways with functional drainage systems on roads to prevent flooding and erosion.

The bottom line is that government at all levels and the general public should allow qualified town planners to do their job. The Nigerian Urban and Regional Planning Act of 2004 provides for the establishment of a National Urban & Regional Planning Commission at the federal level with the mandate of producing an Operative National Physical Plan (ONPP) with which it will coordinate physical planning in Nigeria.

The Nigerian Urban and Regional Planning Act of 2004 also provides for all states to have what is called, State Urban and Regional Planning Boards. This is aside a functional full fledge Ministry of Urban Planning & Physical Development or Physical Planning as we now have in a few states. These agencies and ministries can only be and must only be under the leadership of registered town planners and members of the Nigerian Institute of Town Planners (NITP). I think it is wrong to bring an Business Administrator, Economist, Lawyer or Medical Doctor to work in a setup designed strictly for those skilled in the art of defining the destiny and identity of cities, including aspects like aesthetics, transportation and even security among others.

At the local government level, the Nigerian Urban and Regional Planning Act of 2004 provides for the establishment of Local Planning Authorities statutorily expected to be in charge of development control at that level. It is sad today that some state governors have transferred the responsibility of local planning authorities to government house. State governors now approve building plans the same way they handle certificates of occupancy. The motive though is to increase internally generated revenue (IGR) at the expense of a sane environment. This however, is a topic for another day.

In the final analysis, while I sympathize with the millions of Nigerians displaced and destabilized by the recent flood in some Nigerian urban areas, including some members of my family, I like to reiterate here that we must all adopt the principle of always consulting qualified and registered town planners before we purchase any plot of land or take development decision within the built environment.

Once again, we have an opportunity for proper physical planning and new town development in the face of the last nationwide flood experience. This should propel government at all levels to make a deliberate attempt at mass social housing development and efficient transportation infrastructure for areas seriously affected by flooding. We have to commission a post-flood impact assessment survey to determine the extent of structural damage done by the flood to existing structures in towns and communities that were submerged during the disaster.

It will be counter-productive on the long haul to ignore town planners in such an exercise. There is also a need for all professionals within the built environment to bond and interact regularly for the development of our nation. Government at all levels must also constructively engage the over five thousand qualified town planners spread across Nigerian cities. The ravaging floods we see in our cities are not just a function of torrential downpour but our disregard for town planning principles and town planners.

LOCAL GOVERNMENTS, GOVERNORS & NIGERIA’S DEMOCRACY

Constitutionally, we have 774 local government areas (LGAs) in Nigeria today. Some states have gone ahead to create additional units referred to as local community development areas (LCDAs). Over seventy percent of these LGAs and LCDAs are under the siege of a strange and autocratic leadership concept called interim management committee (IMC) and popularly referred to as caretaker committee (CTC). Under the IMC structure, state governors in wicked collaboration with their different state houses of assembly unilaterally hand pick cronies and proxies to sit and act as sole administrators of local councils with a few other people selected via absolutely unconstitutional means to oversee the administration at the local level for periods ranging from three months to three years in some instances. 

The case of Anambra State is very interesting, undemocratic, irritating and pathetic. The governor of that state for whatever reasons has consistently refused to conduct election into local councils in the last six years of his tenure and reports even have it that there has not been any local government election in Anambra State over the past ten years.

Incidentally, this particular governor came into office via an election process that was not just clumsy but also exhaustive to say the least. One would expect, that considering the wearisome circumstances that eventually led to his emergence as governor, he would be one of the staunchest advocates of democratic tenets, institutions and the rule of law to put it in clear terms. The opposite is the case. This man has held the state down in an emperor-like manner, playing to the gallery when occasion demands especially at national events. For those who care to know, I am one the very few who believe Anambra State can be far better than what we have on ground today given her vast potentials and manpower. If you are in doubt, check nearby Enugu and Imo States.

It is however, equally important to note that the governor of Anambra is not alone in this onslaught against democracy at the grassroots level. He has his co-travelers in almost every region of this country. They are so arrogant and ignorant that sometimes you tend to wonder how some of them became governor in the first instance. They make the loudest noise when it comes to issues of resource control, true fiscal federalism, freedom of expression, corruption, marginalization, sovereign national conference, regional integration and segregation and all those big-big English that have no meaning to the common man and adds little or no value to human existence. They lie from all sides of their mouths and most of them are worse than traitors. My take is that we must bring these state governors to obey the laws and the same procedures that brought them to us.

In the midst of this conspiracy, we must however, commend the governors of the eleven states were we now have properly elected representatives of the people as local council chairmen and councilors. I want to single out Jigawa and Lagos State in this regard. The case of Lagos would have been excellently remarkable but for the series of allegations and counter-allegations from various angles pointing to the deliberate manipulation of the outcome of what would have been a very perfect model for others to follow. We all saw the immaturity and highhandedness that played out in the process. Eventually, the LG elections conducted in Lagos was far from being free and fair. That notwithstanding, it is still a step away from the quagmire of deliberately muzzling arm of government at the expense of another arm. As far as the case of Lagos is concerned, I hold the belief that unfairness to one is unfairness to all but in any case I am aware that the opposition is challenging the results in the courts.

What genuine democrats must continue to remember is the fact that minority must have their say even when the majority will have their way. When you stifle the minority, you are technically setting yourself up for possible counter insurgence, a situation that may likely breed internal terrorism.

The case of Jigawa on the other hand is instructive; all the twenty seven local government areas in that state have properly elected local council chairmen and councilors. That state is working and those who assume that nothing is happening up north should make a trip to Dutse. I have travelled extensively across Nigeria in the past twelve months and I have observed the quantum of development especially across Jigawa State. One thing that is working is the governor’s choice to allow for democracy to run its full course at the local government level. This disposition is one of the core reasons why the state is advancing developmentally in terms of infrastructure, agriculture, manpower development, education, health, women and youth empowerment.

I don’t really buy the bundle of arguments put forward by some of these governors who have deliberately and technically decided to kill democracy at the grassroots level. They don’t have any excuse under heaven and I think we must all rise up to challenge them legally. The attitude of these governors can be likened to that of a President refusing to allow for governorship elections in federating states. By now, some of these governors would have instigated all kinds of crisis to make the nation ungovernable for such president. They will call him a tyrant and mobilize mobs to occupy the state capitals.

The truth is that we all must agree, that any governor that have so far refused to conduct local government elections or set in motion the process of election at that level in their various states are despotic, undemocratic and should be recommended for impeachment if their state houses of assembly are still alive. But then, majority of the state assemblies are equally culpable in this charade. I wish the masses know how many billions go down the drain as settlement between governors and houses of assembly. The bulk of the money meant for development goes directly to the pockets of a few crooks, to take care of their newly acquired appetite and their foreign prostitutes.

One of the reasons why state governors and their houses of assembly are afraid of conducting elections at the local government level is the massive looting of state funds meant for grassroots development via the constitutional anomaly called Joint Account. Technical looting is going on behind the scene and the state governors are settling house members heavily to keep it that way. Their arguments are always shallow and suspicious and it is only the unschooled that will think they are sane. My suggestion here is total abolition of anything called joint accounts between states and local governments. And this brings me to the clamour for an amendment of the constitution in favour of local government autonomy. It is what we need in this country right now.

Another reason I have observed is the remote desire of state governors to keep the poverty structure of their various states intact so as to make economic empowerment and development a function of their crowded emotion. By this, I mean they enjoy dispensing favour to only those who bootlick around them or run dirty errands for them with funds meant for the development of local government areas. A governor sits in the snug government house and awards a contract for a remote rural road in a community hundreds of miles away to a stooge without due process or any form of community input. Then you have a situation again where the governor uses the resources that would have provided clean water for rural dwellers in some villages to erect useless statues within the state capital in the name of urban renewal. It is immoral and like I say so often, these men will reap the whirlwind either here or the hereafter. Urban renewal in the face of extreme urban poverty will eventually lead to urban ruin.

The deliberate attempt to indirectly continue to promote a sense of insecurity which shields governors from being accountable to the people they govern is another major reason why they are afraid to have elected local government administrators at the grassroots level. They want people to continuously be afraid and thereby forget about asking questions about how government resources are being spent, so they tactically sell fear to the public by sponsoring apprehensive events. Whereas having elected local government administrators in charge of council areas will somehow drastically shrink their powers and desire to be the alpha and omega in their states. By deliberately promoting insecurity, governors will also have more security votes to appropriate for their newly acquired luxurious lifestyle. It will allow them to acquire more properties abroad and have more offshore accounts using divers front.

The others issues are personal ego which will not just kill democracy but give birth to a dangerous dimension of chaos which may be greater than what we see Boko Haram doing especially in the north-east region. At the peak of this insensitivity is sheer wickedness.  The baseline of course is the fact that all these add up to one thing, and that is corruption with a capital c. The madness of wanting to take everything to oneself at the expense of the entire society is a wicked phenomenon. I think it is senseless to work against the same system that brought you to public relevance just because you now feel insecure in your new position. One of my friends argues extensively that most of these governors were never democrats in the true sense of the word, they are mere opportunists and they will not change until they are dragged out by vicious means.

I hope the twenty five other governors who are yet to decide on making democracy work in their states will see this as a challenge and set in motion almost immediately the necessary machinery to have local government elections conducted under a free and fair atmosphere. The National Assembly should also rise to the occasion. While we support their new found love for probes and more probes, I sincerely think they should compel State Governors to conduct local government elections forthwith. The federal government should also take a drastic action against these states by withholding all allocations to local council under the strange contraption called interim management committee (IMC) and popularly referred to as local government caretaker committee. These allocations should only be released to local governments under duly elected representatives.

And for those who continue to make a jest of the system by using State Independent Electoral Commissions (SIECs) to stage manage LG elections, we have to warn them that that season of appointing highly prejudiced and partisan characters to constitute state independent electoral commissions to manipulate LG elections in favour of their party is gradually coming to an end in Nigeria. Now it is one man, one vote. I suggest that we include representatives of INEC, the SSS, the Nigerian Police and the Bench in SIECs. I also want to suggest that results of local council elections should henceforth be declared on a polling booth by polling booth basis. Anything short of this is sham. And as for the supposed powerful who sit in the recess of their palace to cook results election results at will, terror will soon knock at you doors.

Sola Kolawole

**An edited version of this article titled “Enough of Illegal Regimes in Local Governments” was first published on the COMMENTARY PAGE of the NIGERIAN TRIBUNE of Friday 29 June, 2012.