The Nigerian Institute of Town Planners said the increase in the cases of building collapse in the country was as a result of the Federal Government’s failure to plan properly.
President of the Institute, Olutoyin Ayinde, stated this on Thursday during the inauguration ceremony of the Ogun state chapter of the Association of Town Planning Consultants of Nigeria (ATOPCON) in Abeokuta.
According to Ayinde, the government of the Federation lacks the understanding of what the concept of town planning is all about.
Ayinde, an Urban Planner, maintained that the government at the centre must fund planning and its implementation if there will be a reasonable physical development in Nigeria.
While expressing concern about the nation’s underdeveloped state, Ayinde argued that the country’s development would continue to be a mirage until the government began to take the issue of planning seriously.
His words: “Nigerian governments don’t even understand what planning is and until they do that they cannot commit resources. The truth is that there’s nothing we can really achieve without planning, so we must be joking as a nation if we are not funding planning because alternative to planning is chaos which is what we live in.”