Urbanisation in Nigeria started in the early 1960s with Lagos and Ibadan taking the lead. Urbanisation, however, got a boost in the early 1970s with oil boom prosperity intoxicating us. Nigeria is said to be growing at about 2.80 percent to 3 percent per annum and the population is expected to double in two decades.
Urbanisation by the way is the concentration of people in an area, usually outside their natural habitat. And before such unusual concentration, there had been discrete movement or migration from areas, commonly referred to as rural or hinterlands.
This unholy congregation sees the good, the bad and the ugly coming together to form an urban centre. The result of course is better imagined than experienced. Today almost all the societal problems emanate from urban centres. Crimes are easily incubated and hatched in the urban centres, where all kinds of migrants became faceless, formed groups and started terrorising their neighbourhood, all in the name of urbanism.
Behaviours that are ordinarily impossible become possible or even regarded as norms because of the so-called urbanisation. The reason is simple, while in our villages, everybody knows everybody and their families, so it becomes difficult to misbehave and go scot free. But this is easy in townships, where people converge, develop anti-social attitudes, and commit all kinds of atrocities without intervention from any quarter.
Even when government agencies want to use their instruments to query such negative behaviours, they are almost brazenly resisted by some people regarded as urban dwellers. What are the causes of urbanisation? Origin of urbanisation could easily and correctly be linked to lack of infrastructure at the rural areas. Since the advent of western education in Africa or Nigeria in particular, the urge for better life has crept in with western culture.
Products of the western education soon saw themselves as not belonging to the rural community. They therefore separate themselves by migrating to a perceived more decent environment, where their supposed counterparts live. And to be properly integrated into the urban centres, they need white collar jobs.
Why is food becoming a huge challenge today? The answer is not far fetched, young chaps see farming as a near taboo that is meant for stark ‘illiterates’. But the only time they remember the products of the illiterates is when they are hungry and for sure hunger does not know or recognise status. Other causes of urbanisation include the quest for greener pastures and only God knows whether pastures are greener anywhere. But anyhow, that is the mentality of urban dwellers.
Effects or disadvantages of urbanisation are to say the least huge. Apart from high crime rate, unnecessary pressure is being put on few existing amenities in townships. And since the existing white collar jobs are limited or grossly inadequate, the number of unemployed persons triple.
The consequence is hunger and a hungry man, they say is an angry man. Your guess is as good as mine, when the majority of a population are angry, the result is usually chaotic. No wonder, restiveness, especially among the youths has become the order of the day.
Again, health challenges, leading to epidemic, it has even escalated to pandemic, all in the name of urbanisation. At this juncture, it is important, we look at the possible remedies of rural-urban drift, which metamorphose into urbanisation.
First and foremost, efforts must be made to address the infrastructural defects in the rural areas. When development had not come or debuted into our system, people were contented with the village life, but today things are different. So instead of wishing that people remain in their natural habitat, it will be more sensible to provide a minimum comfort in those areas, to retain them there.
It equally won’t be out of place if companies are established in such areas to create jobs, after all, the areas we refer today as urban centres were once rural areas. So let the goodies that are found in the urban centres be introduced to the rural areas and see if people will not prefer to remain where they were born.
Largely therefore, depopulation of the rural areas is manmade and could be corrected.
It is our considered opinion that rural-urban drift could be checked if only a little political will could be cultivated and executed. Nothing stops the government or powers that be to look towards that direction. We are optimistic that checking rural-urban drift is a sure way of curbing crime in any given society. Nigeria therefore cannot be an exception.