GIVE PRIORITY TO TOWN PLANING TO AVERT ENVIRONMENTAL DISASTER IN NIGERIA, TOWN PLANNERS CALLS ON GOVERNMENT

 “Government should plan our land because every land has been planned based on their usage and this will help to minimized environmental disaster. Physical planning has not been giving attention to because our government don’t appreciate its right, our challenges generally is that policy makers are not giving priority to physical planning arising from lack of knowledge of purpose’.

“Economic planning cannot take place without a good physical planning; land is a very critical resource because it is limited and there is a need to manage it, country that takes physical planning in serious will advance faster than those that negate physical planning law.

The Institute President pointed out that a good town planning will help to create investors that will generate employment and this will leads to improvement in the standard of living and enhance peoples income.

“This is an association of people who practice urban and regional planning and work in different sectors, we want to come out with policies, recommendations and proposals on how to regenerate our old settlement.

Penpushing further reports that while speaking on the reason for bringing the 50th National Conference/Annual General Meeting of the institute to Ibadan, Azutah noted that “We considered doing this conference in Ibadan because Ibadan happens to be the first, more so, the TPL body started here, so we think it was good to celebrate 50th annual conference here, Ibadan is a traditional settlement that was favored by some major factor, these are old cities that just developed in their ways, it has its own inherent problem, so there is a need to regenerate it for the sustainable development.

“Whatever we come out with at the end of this conference will be beneficial to Ibadan and other cities that have the same problem because most of our cities developed without having a comprehensive master plan’.

Penpushing also reports that in his remark, the Oyo State Chairman of the Nigerian Institute of Town Planners, TPL Adeyemo Olajide noted that the only way to regenerate Nigerian cities is to plan according to the law because cities are just growing up without been planned and if planned at all, is not implemented because of the uncared attitude of the general populaces.

 “We are to plan the cities, we angage in settlement of cities in an orderly manner, we gave advise to the immediate past administration in Oyo State to provide a master plan of Ibadan which they yielded to but what left now is the implementation of the master plan’ Olajide said.

Penpushing reports that, he maintained that ‘Ibadan has been known to be a flooded area, so the master plan has addressed the drainage pattern of the city and we are trying to sensitized and educate the public on waste disposal method and this will reduce the tension of the flood and drainage water.

“It is for the benefit of the people if they can follow the master plan, we planned settlement that has been planned before but jeopardized by the people and turned to slum, and we redevelop such particularly settlement through urban renewal, total clearance, and others.

Penpushing further reports, also speaking at the event was Town Planner Adegoke Adediran, who was the 1st National Secretary of the body, and one of the foremost foundation members that established the body in 1966, said that the numbers of town Planners and Associate Town Planners has keeps on increasing over the years, adding that as at 2016, the body had about 5,443 town planners out of which 2,358 were associate fellows.