By Mary Amodu, Lokoja.
In a bid to bring sustainable development to the people of Kogi State, the State government has re-visited its agreement with UN-habitat and renew its memorandum of understanding signed in August 2013, between the State and UN-habitat.
Many have rated Kogi State as one of the fastest growing cities in the world. The state has however experienced little or no industrial growth to support this rapid growth of cities, and many of its urban towns are imploding due to non existing or infrastructure overload. The State’s urbanisation thus runs counter to the general theory that urbanisation provides greater access to jobs, basic services, and social safety nets.
This was made known to journalist in a press conference at the State capital, held by the State economic team, where His Excellency Alhaji Yahaya Bello was ably represented by Mrs Rosemary Osikoya, commissioner for environment.” The state in 2013 signed an agreement to end In 2016 with state contribution of $1.3million of which only $588,000 has been paid this far. The timeline is to be reviewed since most components have not been accessed.
The commissioner who stated that under the agreement, the UN agency will establish the Kogi State urban observatory that will build a sustainable urbanisation, develop and integrated solid waste management plan, strategic and systematic approach based on the management hierarchy.
“For us today it is a new dawn in Kogi, a new direction and a new opportunity”, she said.
“We are aware that in August 2013, the State signed a 5item of MOU with UN habitat, along the line 5 basic intervention which are the minimum requirements to make our cities become safe, to become resilient and productive”.
She further explained that the agreement is expected to elapse in 2016.
“As we speak today, a whole lot has not been set straight, the State in its commitment was not able to meet all it’s financial conditions with a whole a lot of infrastructural challenges, the project itself, has suffered a lot of challenges. So what we have here today, we are revisiting with the UN habitat to renew our pledge, to say we are happy to become friends, we are happy that Nigeria is a member State of the united nation and we are happy that the UN habitat will give us all the needed it could, over and beyond what we enjoyed in the past”, she said.
The commissioner made known that the agreement entered into by the State government and UN habitat, will in no time yield a major mark of paradigm shift to turn Kogi State in cities that it’s citizens would explore.
As part of the agreement too, an early warning system for climate-related extreme events such as floods and droughts will also be developed, while a model will be constructed for public space at Obasanjo/Paparanda square, which focuses on bridging the urban divide and promoting socio-economic inclusiveness is to be provided. The partnership is also to address social inclusion, improved integration, mobility and connectivity, better basic service delivery.
Responding, Director Regional office for Africa UN habitat, Prof Oyebanji applauded the government saying ” Thank you for hosting us, we have being working this the past 2years and as the commissioner has reiterated, we hope to move to the next level, we have a sub-existing MOU and we have given it a room for our discussion in the last 48hrs we are going to do a review of our MOU and to deepen our relationship”, he said.
Oyebanji added that ” For the sake of our cities and citizens, urbanisation is an unstoppable phenomenon you cannot stop people from moving, from rural to urban area, you cannot legislate it, even if you legistlate it, you cannot enforce it.
He further explained that the urbanisation could happen in two ways, In a chaotic manner that are not planned for and also sustainable manner which is planned.” so what we are working on in Kogi State is to anticipate urbanisation that is sustainable”.
With the present arrangement, urban planning now in the state is strictly going to focus on how communities can achieve sustainable development and use resources in a way that is good for the ecosystem. This way we will put cities in a platform where it is productive this includes evolving equity in cities where you have people living across divides. “We want to generate cities that are not a generation of slums which is what we see in some of our recent cities”.
