There has been an upsurge in the
number of people that inhabit the earth and more specifically, the urban centre
as such, the need for development have also become importance. The alarming
rate is capture by the state of the world report, where they observed that “we
have never seen urban growth like this in history in term of speed and scale,
yet, the important of future growth has not captured public imagination. And
surprisingly little is being done to maximize the potential benefits of this
transformation or to reduce its potentially negative consequences. Currently,
there are a token of 6,679,493,900 as estimated by US census international in
2008, people in the world today, most of these increases in population have
been deduced to come from Asia and African countries, this explain why the
pressure is more on developing country where such increases are becoming a
burden rather than a blessing. More worrisome is that majority of this
population live in slum and shanties. In 2002, UNFPA argued that today, million of people live in Slums, 90
percent of whom are in developing countries. They state further that the battle
to reach the millennium development goals and cut extreme poverty by half by
2015 will be waged in the world’s slums. The world leaders in recognition of
the fact that these human agglomerations are inevitable have come up with
various programmes aimed and addressing the myriads of problems associated with
such increase.
Looking at these goals, one would readily agree
that they are very relevant to the environment. The MDG matter a lot to a
country like Nigeria due to its classification as one of the poorest nation in
the world, and it has all these issues very evident in the economy. But despite
these pronouncements, the level of success of this project has been very low
due to many factors.
The presidential committee on
urban development and housing in 2007 reported that at a growth rate of 28% per
annum between 1952 and 1991, the population of Nigeria is one of the fastest
growing in the world. The population and size of town and cities in Nigeria
have been growing as a fast pace with the population doubling in almost every
three to four decades and over stretching the fiscal, technical and managerial
capacity of the nation. The effect of this trend on physical, social and the
natural environment are progressively becoming heavier, more destructive and
frightening. For instance, a noted urbanist Fagbohun, once observed that seven
years after the declaration, it is doubtful if the target goal could be reached
in Nigeria by the year 2015. Accordingly, it was based on the warning by the
Former President Chief Olusegun Obasanjo when he declared that the chance of
the country attaining the MDGS by the year 2015 is slim.
Thus he said at the meeting held
with the presidential committee on the MDGS barely twenty days to the end of
his eight years administration. Expectedly, the overall aim of this is to
address poverty and reduce its drastically, but poverty which is defined
as a condition of not having enough to eat, high rate of infant
mortality, low life expectancy, low education opportunity, poor draining water,
inadequate health care, unemployment, unfit housing and poor transportation
facilities are grossly inadequate or absolutely absent both in urban and rural
areas. Report indicates that the poor living condition has also been linked to
high crime rate. Accordingly, it has a multiplier effect on various aspect of
human environment, such as environmental degradation through various
environmental abuses. Majority of the population especially in urban areas
still live in slum and no concrete effort has been made to address the problems
of the poor living in squarer settlements. And one of the objectives of the MDG
is to articulate the commitment of members’ state to improve the live of at
least 100million slum dwellers by the year 2020. Consequently, finance is a
very crucial future to human development however, it has been inadequate or
misapplied there is going to be problem. Report indicate that over 80 million
Nigerians representing about 65% of the country’s active population still lack
access to financial service.
Central Bank of Nigeria says that
aggregate micro-credit facilities available represents only 0.2 percent of the
country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Even where financial service are
available access to fund has remained a mirage, a situation where the interest
rate is so high that only few could have access to fund through the banks.
Power issue is also a serious factor that is making the MDG unrealistic. The
senate presidents David Mark has also been quoted as saying that Nigerian’s
vision 20-20-20 might remain a mirage if the country does not immediately begin
to explore or adopt alternative source of energy. The issue of high cost of power
and energy has also made the cost of doing business very high and further
compounding the already depressed population. In deed, all hope not lost yet,
as the new government promise to bring to an end the issue of power within
their four-years in office. As we only need to keep faith in time, because it
beholds on us to start earnestly to address some of the problems. First, there
must be determination to succeed and once this is pursued vigorously, then some
meaningful achievement can be recorded within the short-time that is remaining
on the targeted goals of the MDGs, that is three years from now.
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