By Suara Sherif
The Nigerian Institute of Town Planners has been urged to reposition the planner from regulator of development to territorial strategist, development coordinator and shaper of spatial outcomes.
Professor Adamu Ahmed made the call in his lead paper, “Physical Planning as the Driver of Regional Development,” delivered at the institute’s 2026 Annual General Meeting in Lagos, arguing that regional development is multidimensional but ultimately expressed in space — and cannot be left to chance.
Ahmed said economic growth, infrastructure, housing, agriculture, industry, migration, environmental change and social development interact within territories, and that without deliberate spatial coordination, individually rational decisions produce collectively inefficient, unequal and unsustainable outcomes.
“We must reclaim regional planning as a central domain of our profession and reposition the planner not merely as a regulator of development, but as a territorial strategist, development coordinator and shaper of spatial outcomes,” he said.
He urged the institute to lead the national conversation on spatial development, advocate effective regional spatial strategies, engage governments and development institutions, strengthen professional capacity, and insist that major investments are spatially coordinated.
Ahmed said planners must demonstrate through practice that physical planning is not an obstacle to development but an instrument that makes it more productive, inclusive, resilient and sustainable.
He framed the choice starkly: “The future of Nigeria’s regions will be shaped either by design or by default. We cannot afford to leave it to default. Let us therefore move from controlling development to shaping it, from preparing plans to delivering spatial transformation, and from planning individual settlements to shaping the connected territories on which Nigeria’s future depends.”
According to him, the challenge is not producing more development plans but shaping the spatial pattern of development, with regional institutions, investments and policies tied to credible strategies that transcend administrative boundaries and recognise functional regions.
He added that physical planning does not replace economic planning, social policy, infrastructure investment or institutional development, but supplies the spatial framework through which they are integrated.
