By Alexander Chiejina
Nigeria as a nation has over the years been experiencing an accelerated shift of her populations from rural to urban areas. This rapid rate of urbanization has no doubt engendered several challenges and problems similar to situations in other parts of the world.
Sadly, most problems confronting cities, towns and their inhabitants as identified in Agenda 21 in Nigeria include inadequate financial resources, lack of employment opportunities, spreading homelessness and expansion of squatter settlements, increased poverty, growing insecurity and rising crime rates, inadequate and deteriorating building stock, services and infrastructure.
Other problems include substandard and inadequate housing, slums, transportation problems, low productivity, crime and juvenile delinquency, lack of health and educational facilities, improper land use, insecure land tenure, rising traffic congestion, increasing pollution, lack of green spaces, inadequate water supply and sanitation, uncoordinated urban development and an increasing vulnerability to disaster.
Giving this daunting reality which stares everyone in the face, health experts in the country have called for actions which should be directed towards reorganising the chaotic development that is rife in the cities and return the people to healthy development and living conditions.
Speaking to BusinessDay recently at the 2010 Physician Week organised by the Lagos State Branch of the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA), Edamisan Temiye, Lagos State Chairman of NMA, said that the growing urbanisation has become one of the biggest health challenges of the 21st century to Nigeria and the African continent.
Temiye disclosed that health is a major urban policy issue in Nigeria because poverty and slum conditions pose a serious public health threat to the country's rapidly expanding urban population. He stated that in vast areas of Nigerian and other African cities, inadequate sanitation and waste management and poor state of public health infrastructure have led to the spread of a wide variety of water-borne and other communicable disease.
In his words “those of us who are living in the megacity of Lagos are very much aware of the constraints for space and the rapidly disappearing neighbouring meeting places for relaxation. We are well aware of the slums often located in the vicinity of comfortable living and well constructed neighbourhood. Our actions as individuals, community, corporate organisations and government should be focused towards taking actions to mitigate the challenges of urbanization.”
For Akin Osibogun, Chief Medical Director, Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), Idi-Araba, though urbanization has its positive effect, one of the health problems urbanization is confronted with is the issue of mental health as evident in the number of people with stress, depression and anxiety.
Osibogun noted that urban cities have the increased risk factors for non communicable diseases and their risk factors such as tobacco use, unhealthy diets, physical inactivity, harmful use of alcohol as well as risks associated with disease outbreaks.
“River pollution is particularly found to be worse where rivers pass through cities and the most widespread is contamination from human excreta, sewage and oxygen loss. In many cities in the country, there is limited access to clean drinking water. The quality of several watercourses is poor, with pollutant levels higher than the WHO’s standards.
Sadly, pesticide contamination from urban agriculture, residues from sawmills and manufacturing industries, wastewater from urban drains and municipal dumping of waste especially human excreta pollute drinking water sources that affect the health of the urban and peri-urban populations. In the long- term, treatment of sewage would be required for safer vegetable production and to reduce water pollution,” Osibogun stated.
It is noteworthy to state that ill equipped settlements characterised by inefficient and uncoordinated urban governance, poor economic and resource base of cities, lack of community participation in urban development, poor urban land management and unsustainable development have endangered the lives of people living in urban areas.
Giving these realities, there is the need for all levels of government to take responsibilities to address these challenges by showing serious commitment to overcoming them through various planned strategies as evident in Lagos state with the megacity development.
For Muiz Banire, Commissioner for Environment, Lagos State, “when people become aware of the effects of their unwise use of the environment and well- equipped with the techniques of environmental management, the goals of the national Policy on environment will be easy to achieve. There is also the need for environmental awareness (Education) to institutions (primary and post primary) curricula.
The challenge of inadequate professional and supporting technical staff as well as inadequacy of current digitized data and information on urban conditions should be scaled up. This is because effective urban management strategies depend on comprehensive and up to-date information base.”
More importantly, governments at all levels including relevant stakeholders should be engaged in promoting urban planning for healthy behaviours and safety, improve urban living conditions, ensure participatory governance, build inclusive cities that are accessible and age-friendly and make cities resilient to disasters and emergencies.
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