Institute rates Lagos high in advanced town planning framework
By Oluwatope Lawanson
Gov. Sanwo-Olu
The Nigerian Institute of Town Planners (NITP) says Lagos is among top states in the federation with advanced town planning framework complying with National Urban and Regional Planning Laws, 2004.
The rating was shared with Gov. Babajide Sanwo-Olu when the Institute’s National President, Mr Oluwatoyin Ayinde, led other management team members on a courtesy visit to the governor in Lagos on Thursday.
Ayinde passed the vote of confidence on Lagos, noting that, the state had gone far ahead of others in domesticating the national town planning legislation and setting up administrative structures to coordinate its planning in accordance with the laws.
“Lagos was rated first among 17 other states, because of the sustainability of its planning framework. The state had created structures to meet the national standards.
“The recruitment of 70 professional town planners into the civil service was another pace-setting decision taken by the Lagos Government in achieving coordinated development in the state,” he added.
Ayinde further lauded Sanwo-Olu for strengthening the state’s planning laws, urging him to pay attention to the implementation of the state’s development master and regional plans.
Responding, Sanwo-Olu acknowledged the Institute’s feedback on the state’s town planning efforts, saying, “the progress indicated the state is on the right track towards improving livability for its residents.”
The governor said the state still had a lot of work to do in the areas of building control, fast-tracking access to building approvals and signing off on regional plans implementation.
He said: “We fully understand how critical the town planning profession is to our development. If we fail to have proper land use administration, proper town planning rules, as well as implementable regional plans.
“This also includes the means of creating what our livable space is meant to be, we would probably be doing a disservice to our state.
“This is why we are strengthening structures put in place to address the situation and achieve improvement.
“I welcome the generous feedback from the Institute of Town Planners, which commended Lagos government on the progress we have recorded so far after domesticating national Town Planning laws. Indeed, we can do a lot more.
“In some rankings that came out recently, Lagos is still not where it is meant to be in terms of Livability Space Ranking in which they assessed the state based on access to building approval, infrastructure.
“These also include contracts and enforcement of regulatory standards. We still have a lot of ground to cover around building control, planning approval and regional plans.”
Sanwo-Olu said the state was developing faster than the projection of the government, given the number of people that came into the state daily and a deluge of applications regularly received on developments’ approvals.
He noted that the state had started to decentralise all the processes of getting approvals for structural developments, by ceding authority to district offices that would act on behalf of the government.
The governor added that the effort was being supported by regeneration activities across several communities to bring back the lost glory of the state.
He said: “We have recently just approved the procurement of state-of-the-art software that can fast-track the front-end and back-end activities and improve time for getting approval.
“Once this software is launched, there would be quick turnaround in submission and processing of approvals.”
Sanwo-Olu said his administration would consider the possibility of creating the Office of Town Planner General for the state to help sustain the achievements recorded and also help future governments in their planning blueprints.
(NAN)
