Assessment of the Implementation of the National Urban Policy, 2012 and Formulation of Sub-national Urban Policy and Smart City Strategy by Niger State Government, Nigeria

Abstract

This is an assessment of the preparation and implementation of the Nigerian National Urban Development Policy (NUP) 2012. The focus is to review the extent to which federal government of Nigeria got the states to participate in the preparation and implementation of the Policy. The federal government is yet to create the enabling environment and develop the requisite capacity at state level for effective implementation of NUP, 2012. This is despite the fact that provisions were made under the Institutional Framework of the Policy that assigned the, then, Federal Ministry of Lands, Housing and Urban Development the responsibility of “capacity building of states and local governments”. However, at sub-national level, the Governor of Niger State expressed his dissatisfaction with the conditions of the cities and towns of the state. He was particularly concerned with the glaring top-down systems of financing, management and governance of the cities and towns that was neither effective nor transparent. The participation of the residents in the process of decision-making and governance had been limited. This was further compounded by the over-reliance of the state government and the twenty local governments on the monthly Federal Allocation, at the expense of harnessing their local economic potentials and with inadequate efforts to achieve internal resource mobilisation. The Governor decided to prepare a Sub-National Urban Policy (SUP) for the state; and requested for the assistance of UN-Habitat and other development Partners to, among others, prepare SUP for Niger State, based on the NUP, 2012. The objective of Niger State Government in preparing its SUP is to build a consensus among citizens on present and future sustainable development path for the state. A bottom-up and stakeholder-driven approach was adopted for the preparation of the SUP to ensure full participation and ownership of the SUP by the citizens of the State. Niger State Government had been able to secure a grant from the South Korean Government to prepare its SUP. Similarly, South Korean Government has requested World Bank, Organisation for Economic Development and Cooperation (OEDC) and Cities Alliance, as International Development Institutions, to participate, as stakeholders, in the Normative Planning and decide regarding the opportunity of financing related development projects from the SUP. A Law is likely to be enacted to make the SUP enforceable.