Urban Development Policies in Nigeria

Nigeria’s cities, as elsewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa, lack adequate infrastructure for housing, sanitation, water, and open space amenities. Much of this is due to the absence of land planning statutes that encompass the evolving functions and responsibilities of urban areas, as numerous Nigerian research studies have documented. This paper reviews the status of urban planning in Nigeria and calls for a revision of existing planning statutes to take into account the growth in demand for urban infrastructure services. This article is reproduced with permission from Urban Law and Policy, 8, 1986. This article is a revision of a paper presented at the World Congress on Land Policy 1986 held July 7-11, in London, England, sponsored by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, the International Center for Land Policy Studies and the Urban Land Institute, chaired by Frank Schnidman, Senior Fellor of the Lincoln Institute.