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 in
Nigeria.Migration is not a recent human phenomenon. Over time however, human beings have moved and established
settlements in dual albeit with stratified socio-economic and geo-political compositions called either ‘rural’ or ‘urban’. This
paper attempts to examine and analyze the general problems of development of urban and rural settlements in Nigeria as
well as various shifts in policies and strategies contained therein. However, it shows how and why efforts are concentrated
more explicitly on urban settlements. These top-down manifestations of the growth centre strategies with a ‘trickle-down’
pattern, either in a spontaneous or induced manner, have evoked a reminiscence of other development paradigms and the
futility of the approaches adopted, which are urban and industrial in nature, externally oriented and characterized by a highly
advanced and capital intensive technology. Thus, artificially created Nigerian urbanized settlements are therefore not free
from the intricacies of international dependency position, masterminded by MNCs, sanctioned by the Nigerian State and
collaborated by the political and economic elites.