By Emmanuel Antswen
THE GENERAL Manager of Benue State Urban Development Board, Mr Ternongo Mede, said that the state government is putting machinery in place to review its 48-year-old masterplan to align with contemporary realities.
Mede made the disclosure when he spoke with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on the imperative of reviewing the state’s masterplan that was developed in 1976.
The general manager described a masterplan as a comprehensive idea of what you want a town or settlement to be like.
He said that the masterplan designates areas for every activity to ensure orderliness, easy access, and the beauty of the town.
“The masterplan will show where the industrial areas are supposed to be, where the educational line uses are kept, and where the residential line uses are supposed to be kept, and all those various uses must be linked up.
“You don’t just drop the industrial area close to the residential areas because you don’t want the waste from those industrial areas to get to the residential areas.
“So, we need to infuse the residential and educational areas in the same part. The residential areas can be into three, which are the low-density areas like GRA, then the medium and high areas,” he explained.
He, however, noted that developing a new masterplan would require a lot of funds and may not be wholly feasible at the moment but said that a segmented approach would be adopted by taking the major towns in the state first.
“We have 25 to 26 urban centres; so, having a master plan now in all of these urban centres is a huge task because of scarce resources.
“I think it is better we see how we can get the masterplan for some of these major towns, which are Markurdi, Gboko, Otukpo, and Vandeikya, before the others,” the general manager added. (NAN)
