Urban centres in Nigeria today are deteriorating fast in environmental quality due to high incidence of contravention. This is consequent upon lack of communication between stakeholders in development control system and its operators. The paper aims at examining how developers perceive development and what constitutes contravention. Benin City was used as case study. Twelve neighborhoods, constituting three each from the four planning zones, were selected for the study, using systematic random and simple random sampling techniques. Chi-square was employed to test a hypothesis which states that there is no significant different between the town planning officials’ and the developers’ perception of the causes of development contraventions in Benin City. The finding shows that there is significant difference between the developers’ and the town planning officials’ perceptions of the causes of development contraventions in Benin City. The major causal factor is the existing gap in communication between the stakeholders (that is the developers, urban planners and decision-makers) in development control system. The paper recommended incorporation of all stakeholders in the on-going efforts towards solving problems of environmental deterioration in Nigerian cities
A.E. Okosun (Mon,) studied this question.