**3. Need for digital urban administration in Ibadan: failure of paper administration**

There is rapid growth of population in Ibadan city; in fact it has been adjudged as one of the largest cities in Africa. However, the rapid population growth outpaced housing supply and services delivery in utilities and critical infrastructure. This is evident in the widespread sprawl and slum developments in Ibadan city. Fabiyi (2006) observed that informal sector was topmost among the land use change actors in the city. A number of authors have characterized Ibadan as a city of informal housing and virtual slum (Abumere, 1986; Fabiyi, 1999, 2006, 2016). The brown roof of Ibadan is a display of urban poverty, deteriorating infrastructure, and decrepit housing in this traditional organic city.

The agencies charged with regulating urban developments and housing sector are too overwhelmed to enforce discipline in housing sector and there are no decent alternatives to accommodate the growing poor population. The housing sector is a huge market for prospective investors but there is no reliable database that a rational investor can depend on to provide decent and affordable housing in the city. The growth of Ibadan city is predicated on the need to house the large but very poor population; therefore the city growth does not follow any predefined strategy

**269**

*Digital Urban Administration Model for a Traditional City (Case Study of Ibadan, Nigeria)*

of planned path and is not based on predefined strategic planning. Therefore, urban developments in Ibadan are mostly uncoordinated and unregulated, which make development of slum and squalor settlements common occurrence in most parts of the city. The activities of the land grabbers and unscrupulous land speculators do not encourage real investors in housing in Ibadan because land transactions in Ibadan are notably enshrined in duplicity and fraud. In addition, there are several regulations, laws, bylaws, and edits by the state that govern Urban land administrations but lead to overlaps of functions among states and local government agencies. The consequence is that none of the agencies have the defined operational boundary nor jurisdiction to ensure that the gaps are not exploited by the general public to embark on haphazard developments. The officers responsible for development control do not have the necessary infrastructure to monitor the emergence and ensure compliance of new development to necessary laws and codes in Ibadan central city

Informal but spontaneous unplanned developments are very rampant in Ibadan city and make it difficult to provide utilities and infrastructure by agencies of government. The residents are saddled with the responsibility of providing access road, culverts and bridges, drainages and domestic water in their neighborhoods. The provision of these critical infrastructures in the informal and spontaneous residential areas is often in parlous condition and often done with substandard materials. There are poor or nonexistent base mapping or requisite data for city administration; usually the zonal town planning offices that were expected to verify location of building plan from the office do not have any map to work with and often resort to guess work and local knowledge of the area to approve the building plans rather than use scientific and geospatial methods to verify the appropriateness

Usually, cities in developed economies do not use prescriptive form of land use such as city master plan and strategic urban plan (see [6]), but rather use marketoriented spot zoning, which is more adaptive and can adjust to the dynamics of city growth and city housing market. The 25-year prescriptive master plan developed for Ibadan city in 2018 is not sensitive to the property market nor adjustable to the orientation of government policies. The plan was due for review and update just six

The land tenure system in Ibadan is best described as chaotic and unregulated. These account for the development of squatter settlements and building in mostly undevelopable lands such as the flood plain and the rocky and inhabitable areas, abandoned sand mines, and under electric cables tension electric cables. Because the land tenure in these areas is not reliable, most developers often build structures that can easily be demolished and evacuated. Another major issue is that because more than 50% of buildings in Ibadan are from informal sector [7], it is difficult to use the planning and management principles used in the developed economies in Ibadan

Urban administrators and city planners in Ibadan are often caught between two extremes of providing housing for teaming population of urban poor and to maintain efficient and esthetically pleasing city. Therefore, when buildings were marked for demolitions because of contravention of building code, they often refrain from outright demolition of property since there are no alternative accommodations for the building owner who may be too poor to gather resources together to build or hire

There is no infrastructure to support digital urban administration in Ibadan city. There is also a barrier of low resources to procure GIS technology and lack of expertise to handle spatial data information in Ibadan city. Most of the civil servants that have acquired some form of training in GIS technology and other

because the building ownership and characterizations are often different.

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.92125*

and suburb.

of the building proposals.

month into the plan adoption.

decent accommodation in a new place.

#### *Digital Urban Administration Model for a Traditional City (Case Study of Ibadan, Nigeria) DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.92125*

of planned path and is not based on predefined strategic planning. Therefore, urban developments in Ibadan are mostly uncoordinated and unregulated, which make development of slum and squalor settlements common occurrence in most parts of the city. The activities of the land grabbers and unscrupulous land speculators do not encourage real investors in housing in Ibadan because land transactions in Ibadan are notably enshrined in duplicity and fraud. In addition, there are several regulations, laws, bylaws, and edits by the state that govern Urban land administrations but lead to overlaps of functions among states and local government agencies. The consequence is that none of the agencies have the defined operational boundary nor jurisdiction to ensure that the gaps are not exploited by the general public to embark on haphazard developments. The officers responsible for development control do not have the necessary infrastructure to monitor the emergence and ensure compliance of new development to necessary laws and codes in Ibadan central city and suburb.

Informal but spontaneous unplanned developments are very rampant in Ibadan city and make it difficult to provide utilities and infrastructure by agencies of government. The residents are saddled with the responsibility of providing access road, culverts and bridges, drainages and domestic water in their neighborhoods. The provision of these critical infrastructures in the informal and spontaneous residential areas is often in parlous condition and often done with substandard materials.

There are poor or nonexistent base mapping or requisite data for city administration; usually the zonal town planning offices that were expected to verify location of building plan from the office do not have any map to work with and often resort to guess work and local knowledge of the area to approve the building plans rather than use scientific and geospatial methods to verify the appropriateness of the building proposals.

Usually, cities in developed economies do not use prescriptive form of land use such as city master plan and strategic urban plan (see [6]), but rather use marketoriented spot zoning, which is more adaptive and can adjust to the dynamics of city growth and city housing market. The 25-year prescriptive master plan developed for Ibadan city in 2018 is not sensitive to the property market nor adjustable to the orientation of government policies. The plan was due for review and update just six month into the plan adoption.

The land tenure system in Ibadan is best described as chaotic and unregulated. These account for the development of squatter settlements and building in mostly undevelopable lands such as the flood plain and the rocky and inhabitable areas, abandoned sand mines, and under electric cables tension electric cables. Because the land tenure in these areas is not reliable, most developers often build structures that can easily be demolished and evacuated. Another major issue is that because more than 50% of buildings in Ibadan are from informal sector [7], it is difficult to use the planning and management principles used in the developed economies in Ibadan because the building ownership and characterizations are often different.

Urban administrators and city planners in Ibadan are often caught between two extremes of providing housing for teaming population of urban poor and to maintain efficient and esthetically pleasing city. Therefore, when buildings were marked for demolitions because of contravention of building code, they often refrain from outright demolition of property since there are no alternative accommodations for the building owner who may be too poor to gather resources together to build or hire decent accommodation in a new place.

There is no infrastructure to support digital urban administration in Ibadan city. There is also a barrier of low resources to procure GIS technology and lack of expertise to handle spatial data information in Ibadan city. Most of the civil servants that have acquired some form of training in GIS technology and other

*Sustainability in Urban Planning and Design*

challenges are still much in those cities.

electronic means.

tion in the city.

**administration**

plan, Ibadan Flood Risk and Drainage Master Plan, Ibadan Solid waste Master plan, and Ibadan Flood Risks and Early Warning Systems apart from other structural engineering interventions. These instruments produced huge data sets in the spatial data dimension, which have the potential to kick start a holistic urban spatial data infrastructure to drive digital urban administration in Ibadan city. Urban administration in Nigeria has largely been analog and data management had been through paper/hard copy exchanges. Even in many large cities such as Abuja, Lagos, Porthacourt, and Ibadan, building permits are largely done through paper drawings and exchanges of papers. In 2004, digital urban GIS was popularized by Obasanjo Administration with Abuja GIS, which was meant to deliver a robust urban administration to the national capital city. Unfortunately, Abuja GIS promised so much but delivered so little in that it regressed to mere land administration tool that could not respond to the dynamics of the rapidly growing city. Some cities also attempted urban GIS for the purpose of land administration but the huge cost expended on most of these ventures is a far cry from the products and the benefits to the societies. The states that have attempted digital land administration in form of urban GIS include Nasarawa, Kaduna, Lagos, Kano, Kwara, and Rivers among others. It is expected that these attempts at city administrations will help introduce modern mechanisms to city management in such a way that many urban problems would go away; unfortunately, however the

The closest to electronic urban administration in few Nigerian cities are land information systems often christened as Urban GIS. The popular Abuja GIS and the similar experiments in Kaduna, Nasarawa, and other states have concentrated on the property titles rather than a comprehensive urban administration through

Oyo state government had through World Bank Credit facility developed a Comprehensive Ibadan City Master plan, which also produced a robust digital database of both the existing urban component and proposed development strategies to the year 2036. The digital spatial databases delivered with the development of city master plan provided a start off point to initiate a robust digital urban administra-

**3. Need for digital urban administration in Ibadan: failure of paper** 

and decrepit housing in this traditional organic city.

There is rapid growth of population in Ibadan city; in fact it has been adjudged as one of the largest cities in Africa. However, the rapid population growth outpaced housing supply and services delivery in utilities and critical infrastructure. This is evident in the widespread sprawl and slum developments in Ibadan city. Fabiyi (2006) observed that informal sector was topmost among the land use change actors in the city. A number of authors have characterized Ibadan as a city of informal housing and virtual slum (Abumere, 1986; Fabiyi, 1999, 2006, 2016). The brown roof of Ibadan is a display of urban poverty, deteriorating infrastructure,

The agencies charged with regulating urban developments and housing sector are too overwhelmed to enforce discipline in housing sector and there are no decent alternatives to accommodate the growing poor population. The housing sector is a huge market for prospective investors but there is no reliable database that a rational investor can depend on to provide decent and affordable housing in the city. The growth of Ibadan city is predicated on the need to house the large but very poor population; therefore the city growth does not follow any predefined strategy

**268**

spatial information could not put the training to use because there is no equipment nor infrastructure to implement spatial data infrastructure. The political will of the government is weak toward the implementation of digital land administration. Effort has been directed toward revenue generation through property taxation and collection of dues from land transactions. Most of the time, the contracts for Urban GIS were awarded to foreign firms and add no value to local capacities. There is no effort to build local capacity of the civil servant to take charge of the land administration. This pointed to the fact that the land administration in the states where it is implemented is not sustainable because the civil servant in the mainstream line ministries is not integrated in the electronic land administration mechanism.

Oyo state also embarked on Oyo GIS, which is basically a land administration platform but the local content is at the pedestrian level, which was basically on data capturing. The civil servants were not trained on rudiments of database management and web applications.

Ibadan city is growing at unprecedented rate due to influx of people and businesses to the already expanding city through natural growth [8]. The influx of national government projects such as the dry port and the modern railway terminals will further accentuate the unprecedented growth of the city. The growth in population and the informal sector in the city further constraints the implementation of a robust urban administration.

The fragmentation of the city into different administrative apparatus in form of 11 local government administrations further makes holistic administration of the city more problematic.

The local government administrations in the 11 local government areas that make Ibadan city are weak and cannot tame the activities of unscrupulous developers in the city. Consequently, the city continues to grow in leaps and bounds but mainly as slums and deleterious housing with a lot of contraventions, contradictions, and infractions.

Just as roads and water pipe networks are critical for the development of the city, the digital urban administration (DUA) is critical for the overall development of a city. The government and the civil servant must see investment in DUA as the brick and mortar for good urban governance in Ibadan city.
