In spite of successive governments’ promises and programmes aimed at providing mass and affordable houses for Nigerians, the Bureau of Public Service Reform (BPSR) early in the year said that out of the 170 million people in the country, 108 million are technically homeless. This ugly development is no doubt responsible for the self- help the poor masses seem to have adopted to provide shelter for themselves. The result is the proliferation of ramshackle buildings in many parts of the country. INNOCENT DURU, who visited some suburbs of Lagos and Ogun states, examines the health, environmental and security risks that owners and occupants of these makeshift structures are exposed to.
SHELTER is conventionally regarded as one of the basic necessities of life. But for several landlords in the suburbs of Lagos and Ogun states, living in their own houses comes with enormous pains. Many of the houses are without doors, windows, toilets or bathrooms. Some others are tucked inside bushes where they are forced to mix with reptiles, rodents and other dangerous animals invading their homes on a daily basis.
A landlord at Odogunyan area of Ikorodu, Lagos, who identified himself simply as Samuel, said: “Life for most of us who live in this kind of structure is an emergency. We became landlords by emergency and also turned into emergency hunters because of the unsolicited visitors we have to entertain from time to time, especially reptiles and rodents. Soldier ants are our doctors and nurses because they come from time to time to inject us. In fact, we do emergency defecation and bathing because you don’t want people to catch you doing it openly, but it is the norm here.
“Many of us are living the kind of lifestyles we never lived as tenants because we had everything in the rented houses. We are only consoled by the fact that we own the buildings. But how long would one continue to live in the Stone Age because the money is not there to perfect the building? That is the problem,”
Investigation conducted by our correspondent showed that a good number of the landlords were forced into building shanty one- room houses because they couldn’t cope with rent in the cities.
Ayobami, who owns one of such houses at Mowo on the Lagos/Badagry Expressway, said: “Most of us built these houses on emergency because rent was always rising and landlords would not listen to excuses. Flood, family problems and other forms of crises also force some people to quit their rented apartments.
“Some of us begin by living in ordinary tents because there is no money to start building immediately. Some others who could not live in tents constructed wooden houses, while some lived in containers (cubicles made with iron and pan) until they are able to get money to start building the one-room apartment you described with contempt.
“If you look at my building and some others very well, you will find that they have different shades of blocks. This is because the blocks were set at different intervals. In my own case, the foundation blocks stayed for more than two years before I raised the building to some point. After some time, I raised and roofed it, using tarpaulin and old roofing sheets to block some open places.
“Cold and rain dealt with my family seriously while we were living in the tent. On many occasions, wind would blow part of it away in the night and we would have to stand in the rain to mend it.”
Afolabi, a proud owner of a shanty one-room building located in Okoafon also on the Lagos-Badagry Expressway, is not bothered about what you think about his derelict house. What is important to him is that he has joined the league of landlords and now attends meetings with other landlords who have the best of houses in the area.
“I am happy to have this building even though it is still at this level,” he said. “I am now a landlord and eternally delivered from the harassment of shylock house owners. It was a nightmare being a tenant, especially in the last house I lived in. The landlord was a thorn in my flesh. He was always complaining about everything and would seize every opportunity to extort money from his tenants.
“He has three wives, and the moment any of them got pregnant, he would come and tell you he needed money to pay the hospital bills. After the wife puts to bed, he would come again and ask for money to help him take care of the baby and the mother. He does this not minding whether you owe him or not. If you are not owing, he would tell you to deduct it from the next rent. In short, his tenants were his ATM cards.
“The annoying thing was that he never bothered to repair anything that got spoilt in the house. We always used our own resources to fix it.”
But glad as he might be to be called a landlord, Afolabi said he had not been allowing his friends and relations to visit him for fear that they would mock him if they come.
“How do you want me to bring them to this kind of place?” he queried. “I can’t do that because they will turn me to an object of ridicule. I don’t have a toilet yet. My family members and I do what is popularly called ‘short put’. We defecate in old newspapers or nylon bags and throw it into the bush. Is that what I will ask a friend or relation who visits to do? I will rather not invite them until I have a presentable house.
A widow, Mrs Mojeed, who owns a room and a parlour in Ogijo, a suburb of Ogun State, savours the joy of being called a landlady. But the condition of the building in which she and her children live is not too different from that of a refugee camp. The rooms, like other hastily built houses, are without doors, causing the poor woman and her children to be exposed to harsh weather conditions.
Her words: “I was living in Pedro area of Bariga (Lagos) before I moved to this place. I left Bariga after my landlord threw my family out of the house because we could not pay the high rent of N5, 000 per room.
“When the landlord sent us out, we felt it was unwise to go and pay another rent with agency fee and commission. That was why we hurriedly came and erected a room and parlour here.
“As you can see, we have no door or window. When rain falls, it comes into the house and messes up the whole place. If it is the type that comes with flood, we would have to stand on the bed for the rain to subside before coming down to drain the flood. The same thing happens during harmattan season. The cold wind comes in unhindered. All we do is to cover ourselves with wrappers.
“We don’t have any form of security. We are daily exposed to all manner of dangers, but we always rely on God for protection. We didn’t really wish to have it this way but that is what the challenges of life have dropped on our laps.”
The story of Oyerinde Mudasiru’s movement from Surulere, a highbrow part of Lagos, to Okeoko, a sleepy community in Ogijo, is simply befuddling.
He said: “I moved from Surulere to Ikorodu because the rent became too much for me. After some time in Ikorodu, the rent also skyrocketed and I felt it was not wise to continue to labour all the year round only to pay a landlord. It was at this point that I decided to build a room on half a plot of land I had already acquired here in Okeoko.
“I used sack and net to cover my door and window after constructing my one-room building. Mosquitoes, soldier ants and reptiles freely invaded my room. At a point, health officers came and gave us mosquito nets to save us from the menace of mosquitoes.
“My neighbours and I have also been clearing the bush in the surrounding to prevent reptiles from coming into the house. We have been living in darkness all along as there is no electricity supply. We have contributed N60, 000 each for us to get power supply, but it was to no avail.
“The government does not care about us except it is time for election. The road leading to this place wasn’t passable for vehicles until the Redeemed Christian Church of God headquarters, which is not far from us, took it upon themselves to fix it.”
It was also a rough beginning for Najeem, who said he was forced out of his rented apartment by incessant flood.
“When the menace of flood in my rented apartment at Ketu\Ikorodu Road became too much, I tried getting another apartment. But when I checked out the cost, I changed my mind and decided to use it to start something on my land here in Odogunyan.
“We started with a wooden house and later began to build the house. It has been pretty challenging coping in this kind of condition. We don’t have a toilet. What we do from time to time is to dig holes and dump excreta in them. When that one is full, we dig another one.
“We wake very early to bathe because we don’t have a bathroom. It is meaningless putting a bathroom in an open place where everybody passing will see us bathing. That is why we prefer to bathe early or late at night.
“It is unfortunate that the government does not have plans for the poor to get loan to build houses. If they were providing loans, most of us would not suffer this much to have accommodation.”
Challenging as their conditions are, the story of Mrs. Lateefat Fatai and others who moved from a one-room apartment to completing their houses offers some hope of a better tomorrow for the embattled landlords.
She said: “My family was living at Ketu Alapere before we moved here. It was the same landlord palaver that drove us here. When our rent was increased to N7, 000 a room, we felt it was not worth it to continue to pay such when there are other bills. We decided to build a room and covered the door and window with sack. We managed like that until we added more rooms. Many people who started like that now have great buildings that one would never believe was like a rehabilitation home at the beginning.”
In spite of her success story, she said: “Living in a remote area like this comes with a lot of challenges because it is we the residents that use our resources to develop the whole place. As we speak, there is no water supply. We go to long distances on a daily basis to buy water. Apart from that, living in this place has affected my business adversely. I sell soft drinks and sachet water but there is no power supply to make them cold. This makes people not to buy things the way they should.”
Security, building, environmental experts speak
In a telephone chat with our correspondent, the First Vice President of the Nigeria Institute of Building and the President of the Building Collapse Prevention Guild, Mr. Kunle Awobodu, expressed concern about the rate at which derelict buildings are mushrooming.
“This question has been boggling our minds for long,” he said. “When you get to the suburbs of Lagos, you would see how ramshackle buildings are developing. Eventually, they will become a burden and an eyesore in future. So why can’t we get it right from the beginning? We have seen where a family slept in a ramshackle building overnight and the thing collapsed and killed them.
“It is a complex social problem the government has not been able to find a solution to. When Mr Babatunde Fashola (SAN) was the governor of Lagos State, we advised him that the mortgage system that is operating in advanced countries should be introduced here, but the problem is how do we recover the money?
“Our system has deficiency in seeing such facilities through. There is this programme by LAPO and Lafarge to help low income earners with money at low interest rate to build their own houses. It is called Ile Irorun. But how those people will pay back is another issue.”
Awobodu further remarked that it is a contradiction to say that the government cannot build houses for people “when you hear that an individual who happened to be in government owns so many houses.
“In advanced countries, especially the socialist countries, individuals don’t own houses, it is the government that builds for them. But Nigeria does not even have a data on who is who. So it is very complex to say you want to build for the people.”
Explaining the security challenges associated with living in such structures, an expert on security matters, Ken Oziegbe, said: “People living in such structures are often soft targets for criminals. If you look critically at the people that were killed by the Badoo cult group in Ikorodu, you will find that the majority were people living in places like the picture you have painted.
“There was this report published by your paper sometime last year about a community in Ijora where hoodlums were always raping and robbing people living in tents and other places that were not covered. That is what happens when people live in such places.
“Criminals also like to do their operations with ease. We should also bear it in mind that criminals could use such suburbs as their hideouts. They wouldn’t want to spend so much on such building so that they could easily abandon it when the chips are down.”
He added: “The government needs to up its game by providing befitting houses for the people. And where they cannot, they should be able to provide an enabling environment for the people to own houses.”
An environmentalist, MrTaiwo Adewole, said people building houses without toilet and bathroom facilities are calling for serious epidemics within the society. “Unhealthy environment can easily lead to outbreaks of diseases,” he said, adding: “The government has a great role to play because they are the ones giving approval for the construction of buildings. Secondly, the local government, through its sanitation and health department, also has vital roles to play.
“There is a need for massive awareness among people living in such areas. The best remedy from the government is to embark on building more public toilets and bathrooms which should be completely free of charge. The government also needs to start penalising the landlords of such facilities because the epidemic will be a major one which no one can escape from. Henceforth no building approval must be given without adequate toilets and bathrooms.”
He added: “Some weeks back, I was at a community called Ajowa in Ajeromi/Ifelodun Local Government Area, and it was a real eyesore seeing people going to defecate in an open water body. And it was not even for free. ‘Area boys’ are the ones managing the open defecation place.
“We can imagine the environmental and health impact because some people drink from the same water (where we have well and boreholes) closer to the water body and at the same time people still fish in the same water.
“Finally, the owners of such buildings must be penalised for not following the building rules and regulations by erecting structures that lack toilets and bathroom facilities, which are basic sanitation requirements for every building.”
Government moves to end menace
The Federal Government during the week initiated the Nigeria Housing Fund Programme (NHFP), which is under the Social Investment Fund of the Federal Government. A sum of N100 billion was said to have been set aside for its take off.
President of the Mortgage Bankers Association of Nigeria, and Managing Director, Trustbank Mortgage Ltd, Mr. Niyi Akinlusi, said the scheme was a departure from other housing schemes in Nigeria, adding: “The Housing Micro Finance Scheme is meant to stimulate increased lending to low-income earners in the formal and informal sectors in Nigeria through micro finance banks for incremental housing construction or housing improvement, while the technical assistance for the scheme shall ensure the protection of all the parties involved in the scheme.”
