Built environment professionals met at a forum in Lagos to show the way forward in affordable housing, reports OKWY IROEGBU-CHIKEZIE
How to make the housing sector attractive was the focus of an online forum in Lagos. The question of who should provide housing – the government or individual also came up.
A builder, Akinola Bamike, said states and local councils, and not the Federal Government, should provide handle housing. He lamented that rather than coming up with good policies, the government would spend huge amount on conducting studies and nothing on their execution. He argued that if the government wanted to do the right thing, there were systems that could be adopted.
He said: “The Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria (FMBN) has adopted a workable system where tax payers approach a Primary Mortgage Institute (PMI) to package them for housing loan/mortgage, though not perfect. This system is similar to what obtains in developed countries. The major difference is our jurisprudence. Mortgage, Foreclosure and Contributory Schemes have to work seamlessly. An investor should have the confidence that foreclosure works. A matter should be settled in three months so that investors don’t have their investment tied down to litigation.”
According to Bamike, contributors should be able to access mortgage in six months on meeting the requirements and transfer title easily. He said where an occupant in a one bedroom is married and looks for a bigger apartment, such a person should be able to sell the mortgage and with accrued funds get another.
Calling for creativity in the sector, he urged the government to create an enabling environment and that this would creates value. He regretted that the government appeared to focus more attention on the supply side while the demand side is neglected. The builder said this might have explained why the government’s focus is on building estates, while building materials prices continually fluctuate and out of reach of the average Nigerian.
“Price instability is an issue that can be addressed with fiscal measures.There are enough tools available to the fiscal authorities. However, this appears not utilised. An example is the difficulty and delays faced by contributors to the NHF Scheme. On paper, the FMBN advertises that contributors can start to benefit from as early as six months into the contributory scheme. In real terms, it could take years for a contributor to benefit,” he added.
A participant, Mr. Sina Babatunde identified the challenges of social housing as not a professional issue but that of federal, state, and local governments as well as the community. He explained: “Let me break it down, the state government will ask the question where is land, while the community will be demanding compensation. The Federal and state government are running the economy as if they are running an enterprise in the name of revenue generation, tax and other demand from five to 7.5 per cent. Developers are after profit maximisation while manufacturers and communities will have conflicts with government policies and in most cases Omonile clash/family disputes in court is a major issue.”
Babatunde lamented how the price of an important building material such as cement has spiked through various administrations from President Olusegun Obasanjo at N2,500, Musa Yar’Adua N1,800, Goodluck Jonathan N1,350 and now sold at N4,200. He stressed that without taking care of these gaps and fluctuations in price of building materials, achieving affordable housing in Nigeria will be a mirage.
Also, Tunde Olatunji, an engineer, called on the professionals to propose to the government how mass housing could be a win-win situation for it, investors, professionals and the public.
He said: “We are positioned to take up this responsibility, instead of running after our friends in government individually, only to end up being blamed when things go wrong. In developed countries professionals work together to put sound proposals before government and follow up with pressures on government for implementations, until something is done.
An architect, Femi Shodunke called on the Lagos Ministry of Housing to expedite more action on the provision of social housing schemes in at least 20 local governments of the state.
In his words: “Government should note that citizens of upper middle and high income are capable of building their houses, if given site and serviced land. But, those of lower and lower middle income are the ones that majorly need direct interventions of housing provisions. As a result of scarcity of land, we should start building mass mid and high rise buildings for our mentioned target citizens. Also, private developers should be encouraged by developing for these classes of citizens by building mass low income housing across the state.”
He explained that this might be in the form of reduction of taxes, approval levies, allocation of affordable land, or going into joint venture agreements with the government.
According to him, the Lagos State government is in need of huge mass social housing schemes across the state and can benchmark China’s social mass housing programme, which incidentally are mostly mid and high rise structures because of the acclaimed scarcity of land in the state.
“Hearing the uncensored and unedited real cries and housing needs of our citizens in distress governments at all levels should pre-occupy themselves with the provision of mass social housing. These are yet another clarion calls for provision of genuine social mass housing schemes for our lower income and the vulnerable citizens in our cities as being done in the developed world such as China, United Kingdom, etc,’’he added.
