Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Table 12.4 Pattern of land development in Zaria
Urban land use
Proposed
land
(ha)
Existing
development
in year 2000
Percentage developed
as proposed
(as of 2000)
Residential
Commercial
Industrial
Public and semi-public
Parks, playfield/open spaces
Roads and streets
Railway
Airport
13,302
798
798
4522
1862
4256
425
638
5320
319
183
1492
595
1149
119
236
40
40
23
33
32
27
28
37
Total
26,604
9417
32
Source: Zaria Master Plan and Field Work, 2001.
agriculture. Table 12.4 indicates that only 32 per cent of the total land
projected in 1975 to be developed by the year 2000 was actually developed.
Town planners may not have been able to accurately estimate Zaria's growth
because they had a poor understanding of economic growth in the town - as
well as of the town's role in the national economy. Nor did political decisions
allocating land for particular activities consider what would happen in the
event of non-development.
In actual fact, development control measures and zoning regulations seem
to have inadvertently paved the way for UA in Zaria. For instance, the
government has not released funds for development of townships as was
proposed in the Zaria master plan. Therefore, much land zoned for specific
uses has yet to be converted to those proposed. Development control measures
became ineffective because there remains an anticipation that one day the
government may release funds for the proposals. In other words, non-
implementation of the government's master plan means agriculture is left to
proliferate.
An analysis of variance showed the proposed land allocation for various
urban uses contributed to 97 per cent of the agricultural development in the
town. This figure regarding farmlands was affected by the amount of open
space within farmland that was intended for road access and utility lines as
prescribed by the master plan. This is in contrast to the amount of actual
developed land as specified by the master plan for Zaria's urban area.
Using the f -test, the calculated f statistic of 77.93 indicated that at least
one of these variables had a significant contribution to the development of UA
in Zaria. This is because development has only been carried out on a small
fraction of the land allocated for development. The calculated value was
much larger than the expected f statistic: f
ð
3
;
4
Þ¼
16
:
69
ð
P
0
:
01
Þ
. The t-test
was used to establish the contribution of each variable. The proposed land
