Rents in Nigeria are out of control. There is no one speaking for the ordinary renter. There is no department of rent control. There is no government poke-nosing into just how much rent landlords and caretakers can charge people. That is soooo calamitous.
Here I am, straining very hard to get myself into the Christmas mood, and here is this country trying hard to make me wish that Christmas had moved to another planet. How? Well, chicken is growing beyond my reach. Forget turkeys; they have all emigrated. Then, there is everything Nigeria represents staring me in the face – chaos, confusion, failures, deepening lack, and despair. Just take a peek at the trending news.
First, there was the news that four new universities, mostly for the armed forces, are to be set up but all in the northern part of the country. This is discouraging and disconcerting news indeed. I’m asking what happened to federal character? It is enough to bring on an apoplexy in one with a not so strong constitution but luckily, I am made of sterner stuff.
]Then came the news that President Buhari had announced a Visa on Arrival programme for Africans coming to Nigeria. As usual, he was said to have made the announcement suddenly, when he was outside of my reach so that I was not able to whisper into his ear: don’t do this. Now, this sudden largesse has caught everyone by surprise; heck, it has even caught the government’s own standing programmes by surprise! Now, the murdering bandits we have been trying to shoo out the door, err, borders, might just turn around and ask for resident visas. Talk of your friendly, resident killers!
To top all that, I then read about the central bank’s complaint that the housing development strategies in this country are too ‘skewed’ towards favouring the rich class while completely knocking out the ‘middle’ and poor classes. I immediately thought ‘Ah ha!, our erudite central bank officials have been reading Soyinka’s Alapata Apata.’ That is where the rhetoric of skewed, asikewed and asikiwu comes to play.
To be sure, the housing situation in Nigeria is adding to my Christmas blues; and it is all the government’s fault. Don’t get me wrong. No government on earth can ever provide all the housing needs of its citizens. The one who came very close to solving that Rubik’s cube puzzle was Ghaddafi who, in one fell swoop, was said to have provided everyone the opportunity to own where they lived. I think those who lived in cramped, crummy quarters about then must have bitten their nails to the roots in regret.
I would hazard that more than half of us in this country do not have access to decent housing, not because we do not want to but because we do not have access to one. While a government might not be able to provide housing for all its citizens, it should at least be able to provide an enabling atmosphere. This begins with the government arranging an easy and tolerable access to loans for citizens to get their own house.
The housing deficit in Nigeria right now is unbelievably huge, and the government does not care mainly because the officials do not have housing problems. People are living in all kinds of housing conditions hidden under the African communal living system. That system has not made the impact of this shortfall to be felt down the line of the equator. One of these days, however, the shock of the failure is going to reverberate and erupt and spout hot, crazy lava of impactful indignation and anger when people can’t find where to lay their heads. Right now, people are living on structures hanging dangerously on stilts in slimy waters, windowless, toilet-less, facilities-less, impossible-to-afford apartments. In my city as of now, many houses that should have housed good families are being turned into brothels or so-called ‘guest houses’ not because the houses are excess but because average families cannot afford the rent on them.
That’s another thing: rents in Nigeria are out of control. There is no one speaking for the ordinary renter. There is no department of rent control. There is no government poke-nosing into just how much rent landlords and caretakers can charge people. That is soooo calamitous. True, the economy is out of sorts with itself, even with the world. However, that does not give anyone the right to fleece people and throw them into gutters. Nigerians are being run into homelessness by the unconscionableness of the greed of landlords and caretakers. So the anger builds up.
In truth, much of the anger people have arises from the fact that they cannot afford the rent to the houses they ought to be living in. Naturally, the anger is nothing but the backlash spreads into terrorism when you add the problem of lack of shelter to hunger and unemployment. With these terrible threesome, any self-respecting youth is bound to become antsy.
The rent situation in Nigeria is exacerbated by the renting system adopted by the government functionaries. In case you don’t know it, many accommodations used by the government are rented from her own officials. Oh come on, what kind of system is this? This is precisely why the government will not, cannot, intervene in the rent debacle. The officials are too busy making money. Just makes you think that Nigerians are the most selfish people on earth; too bad there is no world cup on that one.
Listen, there is a lot of work to be done. Many countries have ministries or agencies in charge of rent control or price control or any control you might want to call it provided it’s of housing. The reason is that they know how volatile a topic housing can be. They also know how important it is to ensure that the citizens who qualify for housing are duly housed. The ministry or agency then ensures that people’s greed does not get in the way of the housing market. That of course includes bringing down the price of cement before it brings down the house.
We must accept that our mortgage banks are not up to snuff. A good mortgage bank should have the statistics on how many housing units we have and how many more we need. I’m not sure they have that information. What they are doing now, I don’t know, but they are certainly not working for us. To remedy that, banks in general, and mortgage banks in particular, should be positioned to lend money to customers for the purpose of building or buying an accommodation. That is the meaning of creating an enabling environment.
The government itself should also continue the building of low cost houses. It did this in the past then stopped. Well, it needs to continue now because that may be the only way most people can gain access to decent accommodation. Estate developers should also be simultaneously assisted to work with the government, and efficiently supervised to prevent sharp practices.
Families must be helped to keep their sanctity. As of now, most Nigerian families have no access to decent housing until the children have grown and left home and the parents are able to put their gratuities (which they don’t get any more) to good use on their dream house. By that time, of course, the family has shrunk and the age is on the parents something terrible.
Everyone is entitled to decent housing, especially when the children are growing up. Every growing child is entitled to his/her space, i.e., a room. That’s right; it is time to enforce the one child-one room policy. That is the way to preserve the dignity of man from childhood. Then we can watch our children grow up into innovative, respectable and self-respecting adults; and family heads can become lords of the manor, deservedly. That should end this calamitous housing policy. Merry Christmas.
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