Govt should organise human settlements for flood victims – NITP

President of the Nigerian Institute of Town Planners (NITP), Tpl. Steve Onu, who made the call at the investiture of 39 new fellows of the institute in Abuja, said, “before you organize human settlements, you first identify a safe area where the people will be before planning and developing such areas.He said government has to […]

President of the Nigerian Institute of Town Planners (NITP), Tpl. Steve Onu, who made the call at the investiture of 39 new fellows of the institute in Abuja, said, “before you organize human settlements, you first identify a safe area where the people will be before planning and developing such areas.
He said government has to use power vested on it by the Land Use Decree to acquire land and then make concrete effort in rehabilitating and relocating people  displaced by flood in order to develop new settlements.
Onu said government should acquire land in a safe area, plan it and allocate such areas to people displaced from their homes by flood, and lamented that no effort has been made by the government to relocate affected persons who returned to their places of abode after a temporary resettlement effort by government.
According to him, if a planner prepares a plan for a city or a government and he is not involved in the implementation, there will a problem in the interpretation of the plan which is what is happening in Nigeria today.
He said that governments are paying lip service to the planning of our cities but should come up with programmes to assist people to develop and improve their homes and people living in vulnerable areas to relocate.
This, he said could be done through subsidy or reduction of interest rates on mortgages so that people who want to genuinely rehabilitate their homes could access such loans.