Abstract: Urbanization continues to occur in the Less Developed Countries at alarming rates and with concomitant socio-economic problems whose solutions are beyond the capacities of most LDC governments. In Nigeria, cities are growing at an average of 5.8% per annum. Port Harcourt, one of the major ones and centre of the country’s oil and gas industry is growing largely through unregulated transformation of indigenous enclaves at the periphery, where an informal land market exists aimed at side-tracking the provisions of a 1978 Land Use Act, which vested land rights in the state and sprouting of squatter settlements on marginal land along the city’s waterfronts. As a result of the resistance to the Land Use Act, which could have been utilized for large-scale public land banking for development, the 49 squatter settlements of the city have the potential to yield land for planned extension of the city, thereby guaranteeing security of tenure for residents and improving living conditions.

INTRODUCTION

Urbanization in the less developed cpountries and its repercussions: Urbanisation the increase in size and/or number of urban places is occurring all the time in both the Less Developed Countries (LDCs) and the More Developed Countries (MDCs) however, it is far more dramatic in the former. Twenty years ago, UN-Habitat (1987) made some startling revelations and projections regarding LDC urbanization.

By 2025, probably 60% of LDC population could be living in urban areas:

Some of the undesirable environmental and other repercussions of rapid population growth have long been noted by some commentators as, Omofonmwan and Osa-Edoh (2008).

It is clear that LDCs are experiencing rapid urban growth; perhaps less obvious is that in most cases, such growth is occurring without a corresponding rise in the levels of industrialisation, job creation and overall socio-economic development.

Herein lies the major difference between LDC urban growth and a similar phenomenon in the MDCs at a comparable stage in the latter’s development. While urban growth in Europe for instance from the 1890s onwards was accompanied by industrialisation and was sustained by the developing New World and colonial Africa and Asia (Davis, 1975), the LDCs cannot count on any such fortune.

There is a growing fear that there may be an unabated deterioration in the quality of LDC urban life in the foreseeable future. With reference to quality of life in urban Nigeria, many alert observers would share the views expressed by Watts and Lubeck (1983) in their contribution to the book, The Political Economy of Nigeria:

Commenting further on Nigeria, the researchers highlighted the inadequacy and inefficiency of basic urban services and the huge monetary outlay that will be necessary to cope with the problem of providing these services.

One of the issues in LDC urbanization is the spatial distribution of growth. Some the growth is occurring in indigenous enclaves at the periphery or fringes of urban areas in an unplanned fashion giving rise to a host of problems associated with unplanned growth including lack of access to basic public utilities and residential amenities, overcrowding, poor quality housing and poor sanitation arrangements.

Growth is also occurring in informal settlements usually at the fringes or less desirable parts of the urban areas. These settlements are referred to as squatter settlements where residents lack legal tenure and simply colonise available unused public lands which sometimes they have to prepare for habitation. Known by different names in various countries for example, the barriadas of Lima, Peru (Andrews and Philips, 1970) and bidonvilles in Rabat, Morocco (Abu-Lughod, 2002) such settlements are characterised by a plethora of social and economic pathological conditions and general environmental decay. The Nigerian Government National housing policy document of 2006 estimates that the proportion of the populations in Nigerian cities living in slums and squatter settlements may be over 80%. This study focuses on the patterns of spatial growth in one of the major cities of Nigeria, Port Harcourt and recommends measures that ought to be put in place to improve private and public access to land and ensure planned growth and enhancement of overall quality of life.

Nature of urbanization in Port Harcourt: Port Harcourt is one of Nigerian’s major sea ports and the centre of the country’s oil and gas industry. It was established as from 1913 because its site met the locational requirement set by colonial surveyors for a port-terminus deep water near high ground which shall be connected to the mainland (Anyanwu, 1979). The British colonial government needed a railway connection to evacuate the rich produce of south-eastern Nigeria and coal, discovered at Enugu-Ngwo in 1912.

By 1914, a total of 7,403 labourers were engaged in railway construction work at Port Harcourt and along the line. In 1946, the population of the town was estimated at 34,000 (Ibid.). According to the 1952-53 population census of Nigeria, the town’s population was 79,634. In 1963, it rose to 179,563. By 1970 it was estimated to be 213,443 and 231, 632 in 1973. The 1991 national census, the population of the municipality was given as 440,399. By 2006, according to the national population census of that year, the population had more than tripled to 1.7 million.

The integral components of urbanization (spatial growth) over the years have included the laying out by February, 1916 of the European town and also the native town there was such segregation from the onset; establishment of the Port Harcourt Planning Authority by December 1946 with an area of jurisdiction of some 25 square miles (about 6,475 ha); introduction by the Planning Authority between 1947 and 1955 of over a dozen planning schemes for the development of the areas occupied by the southern half of the Port Harcourt peninsula, the Diobu villages and the southern suburb, known as Mile 2 Diobu (Anyanwu, 1979). The spatial growth of Port Harcourt has continued steadily ever since. Much of the growth has occurred at the periphery as indigenous rural communities are gradually metamorphosing in an unplanned manner to become part of the city (Fig. 1). Much growth has also occurred in the squatter settlements at the waterfronts of the rivers that virtually surround the city (Fig. 2). Port-terminus status increased its economic importance. These advantages constituted the motivation for massive in-migration.

Squatting commenced then because not all war returnees and in-migrants from the villages could find or afford conventional housing. Since many of the in-migrants came from riverine locations, water fronts of the numerous rivers that criss-cross the city became favoured locations for squatting because they offered opportunity for continuation of traditional water-based livelihoods.

Fig. 1:	Spatial growth of port harcourt, 1975-2008

Marshland colonisation is carried out systematically from the fringes by progressively adding stabilizing materials (junk, periwinkle shells, etc). As at the time of the last (1991) national population census, Port Harcourt municipality had attained a population of 406,738 persons. Squatter settlements (49 of them) (Fig. 1) are estimated to account for about 65% of the city’s population. In addition to the socio-economic pathological conditions noted earlier, these settlements are not planned have deplorable housing, lack space and are not provided with basic services. Since such conditions are manifestly unacceptable, how to deal with the squatter settlements has remained a persistent dilemma for the Rivers State Government (RSG) of Nigeria.

Policy options in dealing with informal settlements: Until the 1960s, the main approach in dealing with slums and squatter settlements comprised clearance and re-development with the attempt to re-house residents in public housing projects, either in rental units or in dwellings that they had to purchase. Socially and economically unviable, this approach was capital-intensive and implemented in a top-down manner which led to lack of ownership and as a consequence to lack of maintenance. Improvements were not sustainable.

In 1988 for instance, the Rivers State Government of Nigeria introduced a policy targeted at the squatters to improve their overall quality of life. However, following completion of three squatter settlement redevelopment projects (Ndoki, Marine Base and Aggrey Road Waterfronts), Government is now rethinking the programme for reasons which include findings that:

Fig. 2:	Port harcourt showing distribution of existing waterfront (Squatter) settlements (Imbasi, 1994)

Since the 1990s, participatory or community-based settlement upgrading has been the new paradigm. The argument in the international scene has pointed out that lack of security of tenure, hinders most attempts to improve shelter conditions for the urban poor, undermines long-term planning and distorts prices for land and services, reinforces poverty and social exclusion impacts most negatively on women and children and from the point of view of governments, insecure tenure also has a negative impact on the rate of tax recovery through local taxation on property and on economic activities. According to the World Bank,

New approaches to security of tenure by international agencies (as outlined by the UN-New Delhi Declaration, Habitat II Conference and the World Bank) are emerging. Furthermore, urban actors are changing their strategy regarding secure tenure with impact on cities’ administration, urban governance and sustainable urban development.

Following Durand-Lasserve (2006), two main approaches can be identified in the strategy of aid and development agencies as well as international finance institutions in defining and implementing tenure regularization policies:

UN-Habitat (1987) launched the Global Campaign for Secure Tenure in 2000, setting up a Land and Tenure Section within its Shelter Branch. According to UN-Habitat, the Global Campaign for Secure Tenure.

Overall, responses to tenure insecurity vary according to local contexts. There are basically two approaches. The first one emphasizes formal tenure regularization of land and housing in informal settlements. Regularization policies are generally based on the delivery of individual freehold and more rarely of leasehold titles.

The second approach emphasizes one of the components of formal tenure regularization policies, security of tenure. It does not require the provision of freehold individual title, although this is not excluded. Rather, it combines protective administrative or legal measures against forced evictions including the provision of titles that can be upgraded, if required with the provision of basic services.

Fig. 3:	The two approaches to upgrading of informal settlements

One of the objectives here is to preserve the cohesion of beneficiary communities. Unlike complicated, expensive and time-consuming tenure regularization programs, security of tenure can be provided through simple legal and regulatory measures. This debate highlights two basic answers to the question of ensuring secure tenure:

The two approaches can be shown in Fig. 3. The squatter settlements along Port Harcourt’s water front have developed in a piecemeal fashion. The settlers have no formal title to the land having only been issued Temporary Occupation License (TOL) as evidence of their interest on the reclaimed land. Akujuru ( 2008) notes that this does not amount to any legal interest on the land. Thus settlers cannot use their property on such land as collateral. In addition, the water-front neighbourhoods are viewed as being of very high risk because of their unplanned and unserviced nature. The suggestion is to improve transferability of the properties by validation of the occupants’ title and planning of the neighbourhoods. As most of these squatter settlements contain very large populations whose characteristics are generally unknown to economic and physical planners, the starting point would be to profile the population in these settlements.

CONCLUSION

Clearly, the overall issue of security of tenure in informal settlements is a difficult one and must b attuned to the peculiar conditions in different countries. ccording to UN-Habitat (2003).

In Port Harcourt, although the waterfront (squatter) settlements are multi-ethnic, they tend to be dominated by particular ethnic groups. The unsatisfactory socio-economic state of these settlements is made more difficult because they are also perceived to be havens for criminals and more recently have become hotbeds for militancy for which the Niger Delta has become infamous.

The previous administration of Rivers State announced in early 2007 a policy of comprehensive clearance and re-development of these settlements but this was stiffly resisted because the squatters saw the move as motivated by reasons other than to raise the overall quality of life in the settlements.

Nevertheless, the squatter settlements represent an undeniable opportunity for government to extend Port Harcourt spatially in a planned manner. Given current conditions in the settlements providing individual titles to residents as part of a process of upgrading (one of the options of Fig. 3) would be a nigh impossible task.

RECOMMENDATION

It would be far more feasible for government to take advantage of its powers under the Land Use Act of 1978 which vested all land rights on the state governor to officially acquire all the lands in the waterfront settlements. The next step would be to survey the sites to determine the extent of their land areas and ascertain the nature of land preparation to be undertaken prior to re-development.

Then a phased approach should be adopted to improve the sites provide the necessary residential amenities and allocating living space first to dwellers of the settlements (with titles) and to others if there are extra units, essentially taking into cognizance the five dimensions of informal settlement improvement (UN-Habitat, 2003):

In this manner, there would be a planned, systematic approach to the extension of Port Harcourt. The upgrading/redevelopment exercise should take place in partnership with the squatters in line with international best practices to remove any feelings that redevelopment/ upgrading is punitive, rather than being aimed at improving living conditions.

The government of Rivers State should take advantage of some international programmes whose intention is to raise the quality of life in slums and informal settlements in line with Agenda 7, Target ii of the Millenium Development Goals. Coming readily to mind are such programmes as USAID’s Development Credit Authority; The Cities Without Slums Facility For Africa; City Alliance, Community-Led Infrastructure Finance Facility (CLIFF); Slum Upgrading Facility (SUF) and The World Bank-UNDP Water and Sanitation Programme.