Confront Insecurity Frontally, Town Planners Charge FG

Members of the Nigerian Institute of Town Planners (NITP) have challenged President Bola Tinubu to tackle the menace of insecurity frontally for the country to experience meaningful development.
At a press conference of the association, the national president, Nathaniel Atebije, said to address the issues around insecurity, the federal government must give adequate hardware for combating insurgency, pragmatically address socio-economic problems to minimise poverty, unemployment, inequality, and invest in job creation, skills development, education and infrastructure.

He said, “Nigerians have been going through a lot of stress and harrowing experience due to security challenges that have engulfed the nation for the past two decades. These range from unprecedented security challenges such as Boko Haram Terrorists (BHTs) attacks, militancy, armed robbery, banditry, kidnapping for ransom, herders – farmers clashes, cultism and other social vices. They give Nigerians hopeless days and sleepless nights. It has affected food production and economic activities of citizens. Scarcity, lack and poverty have become bedmates of Nigerians.

“Recently, there were massive protests of citizens in various parts of the country to cry out in desperation for intervention from the government. Furthermore, the unprecedented and galloping rise in prices of commodities has made life so difficult for people. We therefore, call on the president and commander in chief of the Armed Forces to frontally tackle the menace of insecurity by enhancing the budget and welfare of the security personnel, giving them adequate hardware for combating insurgency, pragmatically addressing socio-economic problems to minimize poverty, unemployment, inequality, and invest in job creation, skills development, education and infrastructure.”

He further said: „Bodija area of Ibadan, the state capital of Oyo was engulfed in an accidental explosion at about 7:30 pm on Tuesday, 16th January, 2024 with serious impacts on lives and properties of residents. Although, the root-cause of the explosion could not be immediately ascertained, the release by the Oyo State Government confirmed a conjecture that it was an explosion from an explosive in a residential building due to illegal storage of explosives by some illegal foreign miners, whose activities were not fully comprehended nor controlled by any agency of government.

“This incident might have happened as a result of illegal change of use of the building where the explosives were stored. To minimize the occurrence of such incidence, we recommend that relevant State Physical Planning agencies step up development control and environmental monitoring activities at all stages of construction and post construction. The development control authorities should be empowered with modern and effective surveillance systems for easy detection of misuse of properties by unscrupulous elements of the society, including locals and foreigners.“

The national president who said the essence of the conference is to undertake serious diagnosis of issues related to the growth and development of our nation particularly as it relates to physical planning of the land resources of Nigeria with a view to making recommendations to catalyze national growth and development, also urged the minister of aviation and aerospace development, Festus Keyamo to consider the local experts and consultants in the field of physical planning while creating the master plans for our airports.

“We want to deeply appreciate the minister of aviation and aerospace development for his deep understanding of the need to plan for development and the dangers inherent to development before planning. In his recent declaration of the intention of the government to ensure that our airports must have masterplans to guide their developments, he proposed to engage experts in the field of physical planning. We admonish that indigenous consultants of good repute should be engaged rather than going for expatriates,”  Atebije said.