EVALUATING THE ROLE OF URBAN PLANNING DEPARTMENTS IN ENSURING COMPLIANCE WITH LAND USE REGULATIONS IN FEDERAL INSTITUTIONS: A CASE STUDY OF ABUJA, NIGERIA

Authors

Abstract

Abuja was conceived as a master-planned capital, yet contemporary land development continues to expose the gap between statutory land-use rules and actual urban practice. This study evaluates the role of urban planning departments in ensuring compliance with land use regulations in Abuja, treating “federal institutions” as the public planning and land-governance bodies that operate within the Federal Capital Territory’s federal administrative structure. Recent official records show that the Federal Capital Development Authority and the Abuja Metropolitan Management Council still rely on permit administration, site assessment, demolition, penalties, and title-related sanctions to enforce compliance. At the same time, recent Abuja scholarship shows that plan implementation remains weakened by poor coordination, political interference, regulatory inconsistency, sprawl pressure, and weak public confidence in enforcement. Using a descriptive and evaluative institutional case-study design, the paper synthesises official mandates, recent enforcement actions, and current academic evidence to assess agency effectiveness across five dimensions: mandate clarity, permit administration, monitoring and inspection, sanction credibility, and inter-agency coordination. The paper argues that Abuja’s planning departments are institutionally active but only partially effective. Formal controls have become more visible, particularly through digitalised application systems and renewed sanctioning signals, yet compliance remains uneven because regulatory institutions do not consistently convert rules into predictable, transparent, and coordinated outcomes. The study contributes an operational framework for evaluating planning departments in planned African capitals and recommends integrated digital compliance systems, clearer sanction regimes, stronger coordination between land administration and development control, and publicly traceable enforcement processes.

Keywords

Urban Planning; Land Use Regulation; Compliance; Federal Institutions & Urban Governance

DOI

10.0000/wijamssae.v1i2.evaluating-the-role-of-urban-planning-departments

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