URBANISATION, RURAL – URBAN MIGRATION AND URBAN UNEMPLOYMENT.

URBANISATION,  RURAL – URBAN MIGRATION AND URBAN UNEMPLOYMENT.

BY

RAHEEM SHEFIU

                                               ABSTRACT

Given the tremendous explosions of urban settlements and the decadence of rural areas during the past two or three decades, the myth, reality and hope of a sustainable human settlement pattern seem to have been unraveled by the two UN Habitat Conferences of 1976 and 1996.  Even though the wide range, tempting and unresolved human settlement issues have for long been grappled with by the public policies, solutions to the problems have continued to remain a mystery.

  An urban centre is an agglomeration of people that are organized around non-agricultural activities, and urban growth is the rate of growth of an urban population. While urbanization is defined as the agglomeration of people in relatively large number at a particular spot of the earth surface. Urbanization in Nigeria and other developing countries has been very alarming over the past ten (10) years. This is as a result of high rate of rural-urban drift, which has resulted to various problems like, unemployment, poverty, floods, squatter settlements, pollution (land, air, noise, water and visual), slums, overpopulation, traffic congestion, crimes, and food insecurity inter alia. There is high rural-urban drift in Nigeria because of the inequalities, in terms of infrastructural facilities, services, social amenities and heterogeneity economic activities in favor of urban centers

While considerable attention and resources have been focused and expanded to improve the deteriorating condition of rural settlements with a view to alleviating poverty and reducing the spate or provocation of rural-urban migration, it is gratifying to note that even urban settlements are seriously hit by the plague of poverty, principally amongst the hitherto wage-earning class which has practically regressed from proletarians to peasant-proletarians.  Thus, the reverse of the spiral of rural-urban migration has become the emerging trends and salient phenomenon in almost all the under developed economies.

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Key Words: , Urbanization ,Rural –Urban Migration, Urban Unemployment, Growth,  Inequalities, , Sustainable Development .