The recent flooding in most parts of Nigeria which submerged cities, towns and villages, killing hundreds and displacing millions of people, has underscored the need for relevant authorities to build sustainable cities.
Experts in the built environment have stressed the need to build cities and towns that are resilient to the extreme weather events like flooding as a result of the changing climate.
Dr Samson Opaluwah, Chairman of the Council of Registered Builders of Nigeria (CORBON), said all the processes involved in building a house or developing a town or city should be sustainable in a manner that they would take care of the impacts of climate change.
Opaluwah said, “We should now be designing and building to take care of the exigencies of the moment. So every builder, every engineer and every architect must come to terms with the fact that the world is changing and there is phenomenal climatic change and we should adopt processes that would create an enabling environment for our structures to be able to withstand the changes that are coming.”
He explained that towns and cities like Lokoja (Kogi State), Makurdi (Benue State) and Yenagoa (Bayelsa State) were flooded because of improper development planning.
He said, “What sorts of approvals were given to people to build on flood plains? Were there approvals given, and if approvals were given, what types of houses were approved to be built in those places? I know that you can build on flood plains, but the houses have to be properly designed for those kinds of locations with emergency procedures put in place so that when flooding occurs you will be able to evacuate and know what to do.”
‘Demolish buildings stressed by flood’
Opaluwah further said that any building that had been submerged by flood should be tested and if it failed integrity test should be demolished, especially if they were built on flood plains.
He said, “Any building that has been subjected to undue stress; before it could be reoccupied for use, should be reconfirmed that it is able to carry out that function of housing people.
“However, the important thing is that, are those houses built where they are supposed to be built? If they are not, they should be removed. If they are built where they are supposed to be built, are they the correct types of houses to be built in such places? If they are not the correct types of houses, they should be removed, because they are all posing danger to people who occupy them. If a building has been attacked that way, nobody can give you assurance that it will not fail. Failure will be guaranteed if nothing is done.”
Commenting about building collapse which has been a recurring decimal in Nigeria, claiming thousands of lives and wasting resources running into billions of naira over the years, Opaluwah said that apart from climate change and release of water from the Lagdo Dam in Cameroon, any country that had international rivers crisscrossing it like Nigeria should have a kind of preparedness for emergencies like flooding.
He blamed the flooding of the towns and cities on non-adherence to professional advice, saying the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMET) had warned about flooding in 2022.
He said, “So I expected the relevant agencies to prepare a responsive plan so that when it happens they are not caught napping.”
Also, Mustapha Mubdiyu, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) chapter Chairman of the Nigerian Institute of Town Planners (NITP), said Nigeria’s towns and cities were not properly planned to withstand the impacts of climate change.
He emphasised the need for communities, towns and cities to be properly planned by professionals to ensure resilience, inclusiveness and livability in the face of the climate change crises.
Mubdiyu said, “You cannot approve a building when you do not even have a plan. It is with the plan you have that in a particular place you can say, ‘This is what I can build.’
“People don’t seem to understand the importance of town planning; they think town planning is just about marking buildings for demolition.
“But before we go into the details of planning a town, we must have gone into the geological, climatic and all considerations; and it is only then we put certain uses in certain areas. We envisage that for areas that are flood plains, you do not put residential structures there. There are other uses that can go well with those areas.”
‘Town planning has implications for security’
Mubdiyu, while lamenting that the culture of citizens just acquiring land wherever and building on it was antithetical to national development and also had implications for national security, said, “Town planning has implications for security. Nigeria has a large swath of ungoverned places and that is why it is easy for any group to go to any place and take charge because every part of Nigeria is not planned. Let every inch of space be planned. Let everybody know that for this space; that there is no building yet, there’s going to be a building in the next 20 years and this is the kind of building that will come up here.
“When you neglect town planning and you expect that town planning should be a remedy when crises come, it will be most difficult. So planning is the fundamental that can mitigate the impacts of disasters like flooding and the spate of insecurity to a certain extent.”
He, therefore, called on state governors and other stakeholders in the Nigerian project to ensure that their cities, towns and communities were well planned by professionals.
He further said that when governments didn’t plan towns and cities and allowed them to grow on their own, they often grew beyond what could be managed.
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