GUD Home
Economic
Strategy
Eliminating Poverty
Teamwork
World's Urban Systems
Environmental
Challenge
Housing Reconstruction in Southeastern
Europe
Local and Global
Transportation in Bogota
People &
Community Assets
Where the Sidewalks End
Urban Informal Sector in Nigeria
Gender Equality
Grassroots Women's Leadership
Urban Heritage
Cities and Insurrections
Urban Heritage in Singapore
Globalization and Urban Heritage
About the Authors
Editorial Guidelines
GUD Magazine Home
Published by
Global Urban Development
Executive Editor: Dr. Marc A. Weiss Managing Editor: Nancy Sedmak-Weiss |
Volume 1
Issue 1
May 2005 |
Print Version
TREATING PEOPLE AND COMMUNITIES AS ASSETS
THE URBAN INFORMAL SECTOR IN NIGERIA: TOWARDS ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH, AND SOCIAL HARMONY
Geoffrey I. Nwaka
Poverty dominates the international
development agenda of the 21st century. The improvement
of the health and living conditions of millions of slum
dwellers around the world is a primary concern of the
current Millennium Development Goals for reducing
poverty. Up to the 1980s poverty was largely associated
with the rural areas in developing countries; but the
situation has changed with the dramatic increase in the
numbers and proportion of the population living in urban
areas, and a corresponding increase in the level of
urban poverty. The International Labor Organization (ILO)
estimates that the proportion of the urban work force
engaged in the informal sector is highest in sub-Saharan
Africa, and accounts for more than 50% of urban
employment in two-thirds of the countries surveyed in
1999. Irregular settlements also have become so
pervasive that they seem to outnumber legally planned
development, and their social legitimacy appears to be
no longer in question. Unfortunately, the appalling
environmental conditions associated with informal sector
activities and settlements constitute a major threat to
the health and well-being of urban life.
The main policy challenge is how to
support and regulate the urban informal sector in order
to promote employment, productivity, and income for the
poor, and at the same time ensure a safe, healthy and
socially acceptable environment. Informal sector
enterprises, especially those located in residential
areas, pose real health hazards for the urban community,
particularly for the urban poor who can least afford the
high cost of health care. The policy dilemma appears to
be how to contain the adverse environmental impacts of
many of the activities of the urban informal sector
without disrupting livelihoods, and causing social
distress; how to promote environmental awareness and
guarantee the right to the city, while at the same time
protecting the vulnerable groups in the informal sector,
especially women, children, and apprentices, from harm
and exploitation.
The article explains how the informal sector has evolved in Nigeria over the last 50 years;
the extent to which government policies and programs
have facilitated or constrained the sector, and how
informal sector enterprises and settlements can be
upgraded and progressively integrated into the urban
development mainstream. Part of this article presents
historical material on the range and changing patterns
of informal sector activities in a cross section of
Nigerian towns and cities, to illustrate the policy
biases against the sector in the colonial and early
independence periods. But the main emphasis is on the
contemporary challenges of the informal city, from its
rapid expansion during the “oil boom” period of the
1970s to the economic crisis and adjustments of the
1980s and 1990s, which weakened the employment and law
enforcement capacity of the state, and therefore
encouraged a high level of informalization of economic
activities. As a result, the distinction between the
formal and informal spheres of activity became
increasingly blurred.
This article suggests as a conclusion
that what is needed is not less government, less
control, or mindless deregulation of economic and
planning activities, but rather a more enlightened, more
participatory, and more equitable form of state
intervention that eliminates needless restrictions,
and provides a more appropriate and flexible regulatory
framework that is compatible with local conditions and
yet reasonably efficient and environmentally
sustainable. The key question is: what is the best way
to reconcile the ‘informal’ and the ‘formal’ city, so
that the positive attributes of the informal sector and
other non-formal institutions of civil society can be
harnessed and enlisted in the current campaign for good
governance, poverty reduction, and economic recovery in
Nigeria.
Policy Issues and
Debates
Opinions differ widely on what should be
the appropriate attitudes and policies towards the
informal sector. Some of the more optimistic advocates
of the sector tend to present it in romantic terms as a
form of popular development, a vital source of
employment and income for the poor, the seedbed of local
entrepreneurship, and a potent instrument in the
campaign to combat poverty and social exclusion. They
dismiss earlier characterizations of the sector as easy
to enter and requiring little money and skills, which led
to the misconception that the informal sector required no form of
official support. They also condemn the large number of
regulations and bureaucratic procedures from the
different institutions and levels of government which
tend to stifle entrepreneurship, and to inhibit the
realization of the full potential of the informal
sector.
On the other hand critics, including many
planners and government authorities, dismiss the sector
as an anomaly, a source of disorder, and an obstacle to
the development of a modern economy. They condemn the
slums, health risks, insecurity, and exploitation
associated with the sector, and hope that like other
transitory phases in the course of development, the
informal sector will wither away with time and economic progress.
Even those who idealize the sector recognize that it is
at best a mixed blessing. “In-so-far as informal sector
activities do not respect legal, social, health and
quality standards, and furthermore do not pay taxes, they
violate the rules of fair competition”. Indeed they
argue that the informal sector has run its course, is now
saturated, and may just be replicating the disguised
unemployment that prevails in rural areas. These
conflicting positions pose a difficult dilemma for
planners and policy makers, and tend to reinforce the
ambivalence and hostility of official attitudes towards
the sector. If the informal sector thrives because of
its informality, and because rules and regulations are
minimal, does it make sense to try to formalize and
integrate it into the formal economy with laws, codes,
and standards that could disrupt its activities and
growth? On the other hand, what about the health
hazards, as well as the rights and safety, of the
vulnerable groups that work in the informal sector?
These uncertainties about the informal
sector are part of the age-long debates about the rural and urban paths to development, and doubts about whether urbanization in general is harmful or beneficial. Stereotypes about ‘urban bias’ suggest that the allocation of national resources is usually skewed disproportionately in favor of the urban areas. It is said that if conditions in rapidly developing cities continue to be improved, more and more people will be attracted to
them to aggravate the problems of unemployment and
squalor; that the worsening health and environmental
problems of cities are caused by the unregulated
activities of the informal sector, which, if allowed to
continue, could make cities unlivable and
unsustainable for present and future generations. However, the drive for sustainability has
often tended to emphasize the “green agenda” for long
term environmental security, and to overlook the more
pressing “brown agenda” for improving the appalling
living and working environment of the urban poor. Until
recently the concern for environmental protection in
Nigeria has tended to focus on non-urban issues such as
soil erosion, desertification, oil spillage, the dumping
of hazardous wastes, etc. giving only scant and largely
negative attention to the worsening deficiencies in
housing, water supply, sanitation, pollution, waste
management, food safety, security, and other issues which
directly affect public health and welfare. The
improvement of urban conditions has often been sought
indirectly through migration control and other policies
to contain or reverse the trend of urbanization. This
approach has not only failed to stop the inevitable and
irreversible process of urbanization, but has pushed the
cities to grow in a disorderly way, and for urban
problems to accumulate.
Current research suggests that the path
to urban sustainability lies in greater realism in
building and managing more inclusive and socially
equitable cities. This would involve continuously reviewing legislative and administrative
activity in order to improve the security of land and
housing tenure for the urban poor, to upgrade slums, and to
strengthen urban local governance through broad-based
partnerships that take the needs and participation of
the informal sector fully into account.
The Informal Sector in
Nigeria: From Neglect to Recognition
Nigeria is the largest country in Africa, and the largest concentration of black people in the world — with a land area of close to 1 million square
kilometers, and a population of well over 125 million.
Estimates at the turn of the 21st century suggest that 43.5% of the population were living in urban areas, up from 39% in 1985, with projections that the urban population will reach 50% by the year 2010, and 65% by 2020. The rate of urban population growth is thought to be 5.5% annually, roughly twice the national population growth rate of 2.9%. More than seven cities have populations that exceed 1 million, and over 5,000 towns and cities of various sizes have populations of between 20,000 and 500,000. Greater Lagos, the former national capital, has grown from 1.4 million in 1963 to 3.5 million in 1975; it is currently over 6 million, and is projected to be 24 million by
2020.
Information on the size and employment
structure in the informal sector is hard to obtain, but
estimates suggest that the sector accounts for between
45% and 60% of the urban labor force, up from about 25%
in the mid-1960s. Life expectancy at birth is about 52
years; infant mortality rate is as high as 19.1 per
1000; and the per capita income is thought to be US
$274.
The development of the informal sector follows closely the general pattern of urban development in Nigeria. Each phase in the development of Nigeria's cities
and economy has its own dynamics in informal sector
development. A large number of Nigerian cities pre-date
British colonial rule — as centers of traditional
political and religious authority (Zaria, Benin, Sokoto,
Arochukwu, Ile Ife) or as centers of internal and
international trade across the Sahara and the Atlantic (Kano,
Lagos, Calabar), or as military fortifications that
attracted large numbers of farmers and craftsmen for
defense and related purposes (Ibadan, Abeokuta). These
native towns, with large indigenous populations,
subsequently had European reservations and migrant
quarters grafted onto them during colonial rule, but
they have often retained their traditional
characteristics — with traditional compound houses;
customary attitudes and practices regarding food
handling, waste disposal, and personal hygiene; urban
agriculture; and livestock keeping. The areas of
informality in such cities are very extensive.
British colonial rule neither anticipated
nor approved of the growth of large African urban
populations. Although many port cities, river ports,
rail-side towns, and administrative centers owed their
growth to activities generated by the European presence,
colonial officials remained unreconciled to the idea of
rapid urban growth, and tended to see cities as an unfortunate by-product of colonial activities which had to be firmly contained in order to avoid political subversion and social disorganization. Cities and towns were
not conceived or promoted as centers of industrial
production for job creation and self-sustaining growth,
but rather as small enclaves for administration,
colonial trade, and transportation. The policies and
institutions for urban development, where they existed,
were very restrictive and myopic, especially in the
critical areas of land-use control, planning, and the
provision of infrastructure and services. Urban
planning and housing were used as instruments of
segregation and social policy — to ensure that the small
community of Europeans was protected in segregated
high-quality residential reservations. Zoning and
sanitation became an obsession. Sadly, the laws, codes,
regulations, and institutions designed for the small
populations envisaged in colonial cities and for
“sanitary segregation” were inherited with little
rethinking by post-colonial administrations, and have
been quickly overtaken and overwhelmed by the process of
rapid urban growth and post-colonial transformation.
The expansion of the private sector and the pursuit of
import-substitution industrialization in the years after
independence gave a boost to urban employment and urban
growth in both the formal and informal sectors. In
post-colonial Nigeria and other African countries many
analysts have observed:
a new process of urbanization
unleashed by the masses of relatively low-income
migrants, who have flocked into the cities since
independence, and are seeking to solve their
problems of accommodation and employment
informally, and on their own terms... the urban
poor are now dominant, and in most cases are
transforming the city to meet their needs, often
in conflict with official laws and plans.
Prior to the 1970s, the informal sector
was not considered as a separate sector. Their
activities were classified variously as traditional
crafts and petty trade in the subsistence sector, or as
small-scale industries within the formal sector, and
treated as such. Some effort was made to upgrade what
was considered their low level of productivity and low
standard of workmanship through the establishment of
small Industrial Development Centers (IDC), and later
the Small-Scale Industry Credit Scheme (SSICS), to
provide technical advice and training, and to offer
small loans. No effort was made to protect informal
sector products from competition with imported and mass
produced goods, hence many informal sector operators
tended to gravitate towards trading, services, and
transportation.
With the expansion of the oil industry in
the 1970s, after the disruptions of the civil war, the
urban population expanded rapidly because of the
increase in urban-based opportunities in administration,
construction, commerce, and services, along with the
gradual relegation of rural agriculture. The optimism
of the oil boom and the prevailing international policy
posture, as reflected in the 1976 United Nations-Habitat
conference (Habitat I), encouraged the Nigerian
government to undertake extensive programs of planning
and public service delivery, including ambitious
programs of public housing and the centralization of
land-use control under the military dictatorship. The
administrative decentralization brought about by the
creation of new states (12 in 1967, and now 36) from the
four former regions, and the creation of several local
governments (now 779) fostered the growth of many large
and secondary cities and towns that served as state capitals and
local government headquarters. The urban informal
sector expanded correspondingly to meet the increased
demand of low-income wage earners for moderately priced
consumer goods and services. But the formal sector
still monopolized much of the support that government
provided, and little effort was made to foster
formal/informal sector linkages between the formal and informal sectors.
Contrary to what the advocates of
deregulation had presumed, the economic recession of the
1980s and the austerity measures that accompanied
IMF-imposed Structural Adjustment policies affected the informal sector
adversely on both the demand and supply sides, as
markets contracted and input costs rose. Reductions in
public spending, declining real wages, and overall
public sector retrenchments swelled the ranks of the
informal sector beyond its absorptive capacity. Many
formal sector enterprises forged new links, sometimes
exploitative links, with the informal sector to cope
with the difficulties of the economic crisis. The
borders between the formal and the informal sectors
became blurred. Government response to this situation
was contradictory in some respects, on the one hand
providing incentives to the informal sector by the establishment
of training and credit facilities, and on the other
hand, repressing the informal sector through overzealous
prosecution in the so-called War Against Environmental
Indiscipline.
Patterns of Development
and Official Response
The informal sector encompasses a wide
range of areas of informality — environmental, spatial,
economic, and social, covering business activities,
employment, markets, settlements, and neighborhoods.
Each of these areas has implications for public policy.
Informal
Settlements
The informal sector has since the early
days of independence been the dominant provider of urban
land and housing, as only about 20% to 40% of the
physical development in Nigeria cities is carried out
with formal government approval. The weaknesses of
government planning controls, and the haphazard developments
associated with the informal sector have created
disorderly and unhealthy urban environments.
Housing,
Planning, and Health
The World Health Organization reckons
that it is the home, not the clinic, that is the key to a
better health delivery system. Only about 25% to 30% of
Nigerians, mainly top government officials and other
rich and privileged people, enjoy a decent quality of
urban life. The vast majority of households, especially those in informal settlements, live in
overcrowded conditions, within defective physical dwellings, sometimes located in areas which do not provide adequate
defenses against disease and other health hazards.
Because many people do not have secure tenure with
respect to the land and houses they occupy, they have
little inclination to improve the quality of the houses
and the general environment because of constant threats
of forced eviction. Government officials often argue
that the practical difficulties of upgrading irregular
settlements and connecting them to urban infrastructure
and services tend to reinforce social exclusion.
For a long time successive post-colonial administrations appeared to see the growing urban problems “with the jaundiced eye of defenders of a colonial legacy”. The Nigerian Town and Country Planning Ordinance of 1946 remained essentially unchanged until 1992, not because it was working satisfactorily but because it was largely ignored and by-passed by rapid growth and spontaneous development. Most of the laws and regulations guiding environmental health and sanitation appear to be reminders of colonial segregation and oppression, and have very little current relevance. For instance, residential areas are also now widely used for small businesses, in complete disregard of the zoning arrangements which require separate areas for presumed incompatible activities. As was typical with the military, the Nigerian Land Use Decree was introduced in 1978, ostensibly to facilitate speedy and equitable access to land for much needed planned development. The proprietorship and control of all land was vested in the state. Various land allocation and advisory committees were set up to assist the state governors in the administration of land. In practice the procedure for obtaining and developing land become excessively bureaucratized, obstructive, and riddled with corruption. Restrictions on the availability of land, especially for the poor, encouraged the growth of more and more irregular settlements on the fringes of the towns or on vacant public land.
With respect to housing, Nigeria
experimented with virtually all of the approaches that
were fashionable in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s — slum
clearance schemes which caused much distress and
social dislocation, sites-and-services schemes which
tried to open up new land and have it subdivided into
serviced residential plots for distribution, and slum or
squatter upgrading which tried to fit new infrastructure
and services into already disorderly and crowded
settlements, sometimes with the participation of local residents. Also, following Habitat I in 1976 and
the oil boom of the 1970s and early 1980s, Nigeria
embarked on an ambitious program of public housing
construction. The federal government planned to add
over 200,000 housing units to the existing housing
stock, while the 20 or so state governments at the time
would each build an additional 4,000 housing units.
Mortgage facilities were established and a new
government ministry was created for Housing, Urban
Development, and the Environment, FMHUDE. Typically,
only about 12% of the projected housing targets for
1970-74, and 24% for 1975-1980 was actually achieved.
The enormous resources earmarked for the purpose were
misappropriated or otherwise diverted to the
construction of military barracks and other projects of
doubtful priority. None of the housing programs
advanced the housing conditions or needs of the poor in
irregular settlements, but instead provided subsidized
housing for middle-income groups, high-income people,
and other well-connected individuals.
Water,
Sanitation, and Health
In most Nigerian towns and cities water
supply and sanitation are grossly inadequate for
domestic and personal hygiene, in spite of the gains of
the International Drinking Water and Sanitation Decade
campaign of the 1980s. In many informal settlements
water-borne and filth-related diseases, especially
diarrhea and cholera are common. Less than half of
urban households in most Nigerian cities have piped
water and flush toilets. The rest depend on crowded and
sometimes distant communal water taps, or draw water
from wells, streams, or from itinerant water vendors.
Pit latrines and buckets are still in use,
often shared by many families. People commonly defecate
and urinate in the open or in nearby bushes, so that
food and water can be easily contaminated from exposure
to human waste. Questions are beginning to be raised
about simpler and more hygienic methods, and how best to
distribute more efficiently and equitably the facilities
and amenities that do exist.
Waste Management, Drainage, and Health
More waste is generated from commercial
and domestic activities than can be properly managed
with the rudimentary system available for collecting,
transporting, and disposing of the wide variety of solid
wastes in cities. The system is almost always
overloaded, and large volumes of rubbish are left to
litter the streets, or to accumulate in open dumps where
flies and rats and other disease-carrying insects and rodents
proliferate. For drainage, most cities have open drains
and narrow shallow trenches which are often clogged with
discarded household or industrial appliances, sand, and
refuse transported by flooding. When the drains are not
cleaned, they are unsightly and exude unpleasant odors.
Potholes in the streets, pools of stagnant water, and
waste gushing from bathrooms and kitchens provide
breeding sites for malarial mosquitoes and other spreaders of disease. The level of environmental awareness is still
low, especially in informal settlements, and the
campaign for waste minimization and recycling has not
advanced beyond the dangerous practice of picking and
sorting through heaps of rubbish or moving from house to
house to collect tin cans, plastics, empty bottles,
paper, and discarded materials for possible recycling.
Food
Safety, Food Security, and Health
Safe and nutritious food is the
foundation of good health. In most Nigerian towns and
cities, especially in informal settlements, food
contamination and food-borne diseases are major factors
in the high incidence of diarrhea and dysentery which
kill many children. Unhygienic food handling and
storage practices, especially with limited water and
refrigeration facilities, appear to be the main
problem. Food poisoning often occurs in open market
places, slaughter houses, and in the extensive
ready-to-eat street food industry, widely patronized by
workers, school children, and others. The adulteration
of foods and medicines is also rampant. The World Health Organization's Healthy
Market Places Project has tried, especially in Ibadan,
to educate producers, traders, and consumers about their
responsibilities in ensuring food safety and hygienic behavior, and
in taking the necessary precautions to reduce the risks of
infection. The policy challenge is to promote
appropriate legislation and education which would enable
food vendors and catering businesses to upgrade the
nutritional quality and safety of the food they serve.
Dietary deficiencies among the poor also weaken the
defenses against infection. The growth of urban
agriculture is now considered a vital element in urban
food security for poor households, although there is
growing concern about food contamination by urban
pollutants, and the spread of breeding sites for
malarial mosquitoes.
Pollution and Health
The primary source of air pollution in
most informal settlements is exposure to toxic fumes
from cooking fires and stoves inside poorly ventilated
homes. This is sometimes responsible for a wide variety
of respiratory infections and even more serious diseases
of the lungs among women and children. Noise pollution
is also a major problem. Loudspeakers from churches and
mosques, bells rung incessantly by peddlers, hawkers,
and other salesmen to advertise their wares, highly
amplified music from record shops, and noise from private electricity-generating plants and grinding machines, all help to cause irritation, and can in extreme cases
even impair hearing. As industrialization and the
volume of automobile traffic increases, the problems of
industrial emissions and exhaust fumes will add to land,
water, and air pollution, with adverse implications for
public health and quality of life.
The Informal Economy
and Policy Responses
Some analysts suggest that the informal
economy
is
large enough to permit, and diverse enough to
necessitate a wide range of different policy
measures, allowing government to mix incentives,
assistance, neglect, rehabilitation and
persecution within the total range of policies.
Informal sector policies in Nigeria in
the 1980s were very repressive, while the response to
the sector in the 1990s was much more pragmatic and
promotional. The military administration of General
Buhari that overthrew the Second Republic was so dissatisfied with the conditions of the urban environment that it
discontinued the idea of central planning. Instead it
initiated an aggressive campaign for environmental
awareness and sanitation as the focus of the fifth phase
of the so-called ‘War Against Environmental
Indiscipline’ (WAI). A large number of environmental
task forces were set up by State Edicts to organize
public enlightenment campaigns, and to enforce
environmental discipline through mobile sanitation
courts. Special days of the month were set aside for
general clean-up by everybody — to unblock drains, clean
residential and work places, and remove heaps of
rubbish. The cleanest cities were promised a prize of
one million nairas, and a definite improvement in the
environment appeared to have been achieved, at least
temporarily. Unfortunately, the potential merit of the
program was marred by overzealous officials and the
military drive for quick results. The campaign soon
became associated with misguided efforts to contain urban growth, and to restrain the informal sector, as the sector was blamed for all sorts of evil social influences — littering the streets, obstructing traffic, creating various forms of pollution and nuisance, crime, piracy, prostitution, foreign exchange malpractices, etc. Informal sector enterprises such as hawking and other forms of street business were incessantly harassed and compelled to relocate to remote and inaccessible
outskirts of the cities and towns. Kiosks, illegal structures, and
shanty towns in Lagos, Kano, Port Harcourt, and other
state capitals were raided and ruthlessly demolished.
The military approach was certainly not a
permanent solution to the problem, as it caused so much
discontent and distress, and provoked many human rights
activists to protest. The government of General Babangida that
overthrew General Buhari showed little enthusiasm for
environmental sanitation, and initiated
a number of rural and urban social programs to address
the poverty and austerity that came in the wake of
Structural Adjustment policies, notably the well-funded
Directorate for Food, Roads and Rural Infrastructure,
and the Directorates for Employment, Mass Mobilization,
and more. For the urban informal sector the most
relevant initiatives were the establishment of the
People’s Bank, the Community Banks, and the National
Directorate for Employment. Access to financial credit is important for small businesses aspiring to grow and
become more profitable. Between 1990 and 1992 the
Nigerian government established as many as 400 Community and
Peoples Banks, modeled on the Asian experience with micro-lending, and on
the principles of a traditional rotational credit
system. These banks were to provide small loans and
other forms of financial and business services for the
poor and informal sector enterprises, with the whole
community acting as guarantor for loan repayment.
Within two years these banks together had built up
assets of over 981 million naira, mobilized over 640
million in savings and deposits, and disbursed 150
million naira as loans and advances. Unfortunately,
recent studies suggest that only about 10% of informal
sector workers interviewed were aware of how to take
advantage of the new facilities offered by the banks and
the Employment Directorate. Civil servants, military
officers’ wives, and other well-connected persons appear
to have hijacked the scheme, often getting loans far in
excess of the approved official maximum.
The National Directorate for Employment (NDE), established in 1987, was meant to promote self-employment through training and loans to
unemployed youth, but the main orientation of the
program was to reverse rural-urban migration by
encouraging investment in rural agriculture. The
informal sector was thought to be already saturated,
although the government also launched the National Open
Apprenticeship Scheme (part of the NDE) to support the
placement of apprentices in informal sector workshops,
and to supplement their practical training with other
forms of formal training for skills they would need in
the future for their enterprises. Again, only a small
percentage of unemployed youth and apprentices benefited
from this initiative, which was harmed by underfunding
and various forms of corruption and abuse.
Emerging Trends and
Policy Directions
Since the World Bank and the United
Nations system of organizations are the largest and most
influential agencies for development assistance, the
policies and development agendas they advocate tend to
provide the international policy context for national
and even local policies and programs for developing
countries. The main elements of good governance which
these agencies prescribe as essential for sustainable
urbanization and the improvement of human settlements
include the principles of enablement,
decentralization, and partnership. The
enabling strategy implies that the traditional welfare
state approach, in which government sought to be the
primary provider, should give way to a new role for
government as enabler and facilitator that creates the
right environment and incentives for the formal and
informal private sector and civil society organizations
to contribute to the development process. But
government is also to intervene where necessary to
enable markets to operate effectively, to ensure social
equity, and to protect the poor and disadvantaged
groups. There is also a new emphasis on a more
collaborative approach to development that would
integrate and mutually support the development
objectives of the various stakeholders. For instance,
the 1996 Habitat Agenda of the United Nations urges that
Partnerships among countries and
among all actors within countries from public,
private, voluntary, and community-based
organizations, the cooperative sector,
non-governmental organizations, and individuals
are essential to the achievement of sustainable
human settlements development and the provision
of adequate shelter for all and basic services.
There is also growing international consensus that the crisis of governance in developing countries is at the heart of the worsening urban environmental health conditions. Decentralization is considered essential because government is more effective when power is shared, and when the level of government nearest to the people is given sufficient authority and resources to respond effectively to local needs. Nigeria has since the 1980s tried to restructure the country’s political system, and to decentralize the structure of administration by creating 36 states from the four former regions, along with as many as 774 new local
governments. But decision-making and resources
allocation have remained highly centralized. Local
government and municipalities still remain under the
legal and political influence of the higher levels of
government whose leaders appear to have different
political interests and priorities. There remains an
urgent need for genuine decentralization to open up more
political space at the local level and encourage more
broad-based participation, accountability,
inclusiveness, and social sustainability.
These cardinal principles of good
governance, as well as the general concern for poverty
reduction, are reflected in the different global
initiatives of the last decade which seek to implement
the programs of action of the major UN conferences and
development goals. In addition to the Sustainable
Cities Program, the UN-Habitat and its partner
organizations have launched the Global Campaign on Urban Governance and the Global Campaign for Secure Tenure that
seek to promote more inclusive cities, and to guide
national governments and local authorities on the need
for improved governance practices, for secure land and
housing tenure, and how to combat the incidence of
forced evictions. The Urban Management Program (UMP),
and Cities Alliance, both sponsored by the UN and
World Bank, seek, like the Millennium Development Goals,
to achieve a significant improvement in the lives of
millions of slum dwellers within the next decade. As
well, the World Health Organization’s Healthy Cities
Program seeks to highlight the health and environmental
dimensions of urban development, and to promote a more
integrated approach to urban management and human
settlement development.
The Way Forward
The way forward lies in adapting the
lessons of international research and experience to
local conditions, and in the collaborative efforts of
state and local authorities, the international
development community, and informal sector workers
themselves. The overall goal should be to build better
functioning, more inclusive, healthier, and socially
sustainable cities.
In the new urban partnerships proposed
above, local governments are on the front line,
and should be given greater authority, discretion, and
enhanced capacity to mobilize support and
resources, taking everybody’s needs and views into
account in formulating and implementing development
policies and programs. The concept of Local Agenda 21,
promoted by the Earth Summit in Rio and by ICLEI–Local
Governments for Sustainability, is based on the premise
that local governments are better placed than distant
central or regional authorities to broker and harmonize
the new partnerships among various stakeholders.
To play their role more effectively, local
governments need improved technical, administrative, and
financial capacity through genuine decentralization and
increased support from national and international
development agencies, including non-governmental
organizations (NGOs). As well, it is essential to
increase the level of local participation by allowing
the poor more scope for their own initiatives, and
greater influence on public policies and service
provision. The various associations and organizations
of local governments and local government employees in
Nigeria such as Association of Local Governments of Nigeria (ALGON) and National Union of Local Government Employees (NULGA) should act more
forcefully as intermediaries in policy dialogue, and
through networking promote the exchange of ideas,
experiences, and resources. Above all, the ongoing
consultations in the country to review the 1976 Local
Government Guidelines, in order to strengthen the
position of local governments, should be sustained and
hopefully guided by the recommendations of the Political
Bureau of 1987 on the matter.
At the national level, government
must address squarely the unresolved constitutional
question of intergovernmental relations in the Nigerian
federal system, to ensure greater decentralization of
roles, and a more equitable allocation of resources
among the three tiers of government — federal, state,
and local. As part of creating the supportive and
enabling environment referred to above, governments at
the federal and state levels should continuously review
and update existing legislation with respect to urban
planning, building standards, infrastructure, and
environmental regulations in order to make them more
realistic, attainable, and compatible with local
conditions. While government and planners should retain
long-term control to guarantee public safety and
environmental health, local conditions dictate that
planning should become more flexible, more advisory and
promotional, and seek to mediate conflicting interests
and values, rather than adhere to the traditional
preoccupation with zoning, regulations, and controls to
preserve the sanctity of public and private property,
and to stop slums from forming. Some adjustments and
compromises have to be made in order to ensure enhanced security
of land and housing tenure for the poor and give
them a sufficient stake in and incentives to improve the
quality of where they live and work. Informal sector
settlements and activities must be decriminalized to
ensure social harmony and sustainability.
Indeed, current research suggests that
slums and irregular settlements grow not only because
the people who live in them are poor, but because of
overregulation, the sluggishness of government to
provide adequate and affordable land, and failure to
harness the energies and resources of the poor in the
right direction. The creation of dual and parallel
urban systems — the ‘formal’ and ‘informal’, the ‘legal’
and ‘illegal’, should give way to an appropriate mix and
range of tenure systems and standards within the same
city, providing scope for incremental improvement over
time as resources improve. While the discredited
colonial Town and Country Planning Act of 1946 has been
replaced by the 1992 Urban and Regional Planning Law,
none of the National Planning Commissions, State
Planning Boards, and Local Government Planning
Authorities envisaged in the implementation of the
provisions of the new law have yet to become
operational. There is also a long-standing need to
review the centralized approach to land-use controls
introduced by the 1978 Land Use Decree, and to move
towards a more decentralized land delivery system, that
would be more flexible, and would also incorporate
traditional concepts and practices that are still widely
adopted in most urban and peri-urban areas. This is in
line with the current advocacy for reshaping formal
institutions to reconcile them to local conditions and
give them greater social legitimacy. Recent research by
a World Bank team has stressed the need to restore “the
structural and functional disconnect between informal
indigenous institutions rooted in the region’s history
and culture, and formal institutions mostly transplanted
from outside”. Indeed, according to A. L. Mabogunje,
many Nigerian and African cities still look like houses
built from the roof down:
all the institutions of modern
urbanization are in place — the banks, the
factories, the legal system, the unions, etc.;
but all these appear to be suspended over
societies that have no firm connections to them,
and whose indigenous institutions, even when
oriented in the right direction, lack the
necessary scaffolding to connect to their modern
surrogates.
Furthermore, while some of the
anti-urban, back-to-the-land policies to contain and reverse rapid urbanization now appear to be unhelpful, it may be necessary to explore more actively national policies to slow down the rate of population growth in the cities and towns through programs for reproductive health
and family planning, which, together with purposeful
urbanization policies, could help to lower fertility and
thus ease population pressures on urban
services.
International development assistance
also needs to be reviewed and better coordinated to give
greater priority to poverty reduction and improved
social services. New safety nets need to be evolved
because of the dramatic increase in urban poverty
following the economic crisis and structural adjustments
of the 1980s and 1990s. The UN's Habitat Agenda urges
multilateral and bilateral development agencies, the UN
agencies, regional development organizations, and NGOs
to provide new and additional financial assistance and
technical support for capacity-building and
institution-building in order to achieve the goal of
‘Adequate Shelter for All’. There is an even greater
urgency to address the structural causes and roots of
poverty in the developing world through positive action
on the issues of finance, external debt, international
trade, and transfer of technology. The major
development agencies should be given more support to
disseminate information on best practices that could
guide governance and human development policies in the
developing world.
The different global development
initiatives sponsored by the World Bank, UNDP,
UN-Habitat, WHO, ICLEI, Cities Alliance as well as the NGOs, need to be
better coordinated to complement each other, and to be
able to identify gaps in the international development
effort. Also, the new advocacy for decentralized
cooperation among donors has the potential to promote
North-South city-to-city relations for mutual benefit,
and to channel resources and expertise directly to local
governments and municipalities, and to other deserving
local partners.
Finally, informal sector operators should not be content merely with self-help and being left alone to fend for themselves. With their diverse and widely dispersed enterprises and settlements, and their general orientation towards their rural hometowns, they are usually more difficult to organize and to develop much needed civic engagement. But they need better organization and self-regulation to be able to engage more constructively with government and other development partners, and to increase their power to lobby, negotiate, and influence public policy in favor of their sector. They could pool resources through ‘clustering’ and other ways of cooperating that
foster mutual support to help their businesses grow
and mature. Collectively they must curb some of the
socially unacceptable ‘coping strategies’ that tend to
discredit them, such as adulteration, crime, and other
sharp practices, and confine themselves to genuine
activities for livelihoods which are only technically
‘illegal’ in the sense of not conforming with official
regulations and bureaucratic norms that are often
arbitrary and inequitable. After all, as the Danish
International Development Agency has stated:
a modern economy can be made up
of sectors and activities with very different
sizes, types of technology, styles of
organization and degrees of integration into
local, national, regional and international
markets... The fundamental raison d’etre of any
economic system is the well-being of the
individuals, their families and communities.
Economic power, the growth of national income,
the increase of profit, the enlargement of a
firm are only instruments. Deified, they become
obstacles to the welfare of the population. To
modernize the economy is to use the best
techniques available to allow the individual to
work, to create, to earn an income, and to
enforce the rights of employees and workers.
Geoffrey Nwaka is Professor and Dean of the College of Postgraduate Studies at Abia State University in Uturu, Nigeria, and a member of the Advisory Board of Global Urban Development. Dr. Nwaka is the author of Town Planning in Eastern Nigeria and Colonial Calabar.
Return to top
|
|