By Maduka Nweke
Sulaimon Yusuf is the National President of Building Collapse Prevention Guild in Nigeria (BCPG). A Fellow of the Institute of Town Planning who studied Town Planning in Ibadan Polytechnic. He got into Lagos State Civil Service as a Town Planning Officer after NYSC and rose to the rank of a Director in the Town Planning Service in Lagos State. In 2005, he was appointed a General Manager, Lagos State Physical Planning Development Authority.
He served as a Special Adviser to the then Governor, Babatunde Fashola. During the Administration, he was in charge of Projects Monitoring and Implementation, the Governor’s office. That was the schedule he held till 2015 before establishing a Town Planning Associates, Planning Consultants and Development Services. In this interview with the Daily Sun, Sulaimon fielded questions from our team on various issues regarding real estate, what should be done to give the sector human face. How Land Use Act, poor mortgage facility, no regulation of building materials prices and others are impeding the growth of real estate in the country.
Excerpts:
What can you say about development of real estate under Buhari administration?
Well, in terms of performance in real estate, during the last regime, we need to look at two different areas. What has been the roles of the federal government as to provision of housing during the same period. If you are talking about Nigeria, what is the role of state government, what has been the roles of the local government, because when you are talking about housing provision, housing suppose to be something for everybody. In the past, we use to hear housing for all, 2000, all those slangs are just to tell us the importance and plans for housing. Every human being suppose to have access to decent accommodation. And so, that policy was made to elucidate what government is planning. During the last administration, yes, we can look at the assessment of our Ministry of Works and Housing. They have the policy to provide housing through two different areas. You can see the work of Federal Housing Authority (FHA) to provide houses. You can see what the Ministry is doing, giving land to consultants to build houses in all the states of the federation. These are the impacts that we feel, safe for those states who have not been able to give land to federal government, houses are not built there. So, now, when you look at the performance, you say okay, for those states that have provided land, they were able to provide houses through Private Partnerships Projects (PPP).
Government gets land, then brings in some financials, develops and then build houses. But what is most important is what type of houses are they providing for us. They are actually looking at the medium houses because the low cost housing is not there. So the main thing should be on the low cost housing for the masses at that level. This is mostly for the state governments. Yes, Lagos state government is trying but there are yet more to be done than to provide housing. When you look at local government, you have more or less, forgotten that they have a role to play in housing. That is a big leg that we left there and that will tell us that there is need for autonomy of the local government. They have a critical role to play. You can imagine the number of local government we have in Nigeria. Let us say each of the local government per annum are producing 250 housing units, look at the quantum they will add in housing supply. So we need to focus on local government for them to be providing houses. They are the closest to the grassroots.
What agenda do you have for the current administration?
First and foremost, we need to look at our land policy, government needs to free land to enable
better participation in housing. There will be need to encourage more private sector initiative. For us to have the low cost housing we are looking at, there must be a change in policy. You need to provide enabling environment to the private sector. You want them to deliver the low cost housing, it means government on its own must be ready to provide infrastructure in those developments. The present government must be looking at how it will refocus the land policy, encourage adequate participation, provide incentive to the private sector to enable them build the low cost housing. They need to give them land free, provide infrastructure in those areas, for that will reduce their expenses in those houses. Then, for the state government too, they have to provide the land, provide houses too by engaging the estate developers who can develop, then tailor your land policy to ensure that when you give land to all these people, curtain percentages, about 30 per cent should be dedicated to the provision of low cost housing within the estate. Through this medium, it is compulsory we must address the problem of low cost housing, and through that medium, we can have more houses available for that level of needs.
Building collapse has become part and parcel of our life here in Nigeria, where are we getting it wrong, is it from government or individual private developers?
It is from all of us. I don’t know whether by nature the way we do things? We don’t obey laws be regulations. That is one of the greatest problems we have here in Nigeria as Nigerians. We don’t obey rules and regulations. Leave that one, then indiscipline is so high. People are feeling that they can do anything and go away with it. Then, we don’t give proper recognition to the professionals. People are trained in various aspects and they are trained to be made available to assist in the building industry. But, what you see now is when people build, they hardly engage the right professionals to handle the project. So, government on its part should put up regulation standards, grant building approval. How many buildings in Lagos submit building approvals for vetting. Probably, you may see about 40 per cent but the rule is that before any construction, you must obtain permit from government. They don’t want to obtain permission from government and that is indiscipline. Even after granting you approval, when you want to construct, you let them know, you inform LAMCA. If you tell them, they will be able to monitor what you are doing and advise you as you are moving on stage by stage. By that, if there is any error, they will be part of it. They can easily check what you are doing and tell you that is not the best way to do it. You are supposed to engage qualified experience architect, you ignore that, to engage qualified engineers when you are building, you ignore that. Instead of that you engage quacks and when the quack you engage don’t have good drawings he cannot give good drawing because one does not give what one does not have. So what we now have is that quacks have taken over the whole environment parts of construction industry and the resultant effect is what we are seeing. Our artisans too, they are not well trained and that is why you have in our environment artisans from other neighboring countries taking over our jobs. Google everywhere, Ghana artisans everywhere, they say they are well trained than the ones here. Why do we leave our own people not properly trained? So, that is the challenge we have. We need to set up vocational centers everywhere because we need to massively train our artisans. They now make money for themselves not foreigners making money here while we turn our own artisans to miscreants. If we won’t engage them, what then will they be doing? We are not training them either. We need to make them available to the market after training them. So, these are the multi-seated problems which everybody has a role to play. Government has the role to monitor properly and ensure that people are doing the right thing and if they are not doing the right thing sanction them. Everybody must complain about something wrong going on in his area. We are too relaxed but we must be bothered if somebody building next to you is not building it well. You need to talk. If you fail to talk, one day you will become a victim with him because you will be equally affected. By doing that, you will be able to stop somebody doing a shoddy job around you. We need to educate our people more and more for them to get it right the first time.
What kind of development do Nigerians see in real estate?
Well, the issue is, there are houses provided by the housing Corporation. They are only attending to high ends and the medium because they want to make gains. As much as the aim of these housing corporations is commercial in nature, you will see that the area they will be interested most will be those areas that would fetch them money. If you want to go into social housing, you know an area you say you will go and make money. That is why the dimensions of the problem is seriously very important. So, social housing is the way to go through which we can address the imbalance and be able to sustain it. Yes, houses are being provided for rental bases like in Lagos, but we need mortgage. It is only in this country that most people, more than 90 per cent of the people build houses on their own without mortgage. It doesn’t augur well for our system. Mortgage must be introduced, it should be encouraged, it should be regulated in terms of what amount of money people are going to pay for mortgage. We should be able to have mortgage at less than 10 per cent. And if you go that way, a lot of things will happen. All these notorious ways of construction in our system, will reduce. But when you know that before you can build a house, you have to go through mortgage, and for you to get mortgage, there are conditions they will give you and they will also monitor what you are building, sanity will be brought in the system. But when people just build on their own, with the little money they have, they can afford to do anything. So, we need to inculcate that mortgage issue into our system. That way, it will help the system to help the environment to achieve sustainability to reduce the disaster we use to have.
Do you think Nigerians are empowered in real estate?
You look at the categories we are looking at and that is why I emphasize on the issue of mortgage. If your salary is below and you can’t afford to have money to buy houses, to buy land, the in thing is the mortgage facilities at all levels. People now have cooperative society. They vent their interest through cooperative societies. They come together, contribute money buy land, give land to you and you start to build. So, it is like individuals that are finding ways round the hardship around them. But, the most important aspect of it is to make it available to all. We will have it through this mortgage facility. If workers are aware that there are mortgage facilities to access to get a house, they will intensify their efforts. The orientation has to change too in terms of, I want to hold my own house and land. No, that orientation has to change. People should know that what is important to them is shelter over their heads. It is not the land. So people should be imbibing the culture of owning flats. For now what we have in mind is I want to have land, I want to have house. But, it is not the land that matters. What is important is shelter over the head so when government builds houses, you can afford to go and rent, affordable rent and from rent you can be the owner of the house. So all these things will start inculcating in our people and the buying will be there. So when government build houses, peoples will not say, I need my own land, no, have that culture of, this is a shelter that I can live in and do what I need to do.
Why do we have estates springing everywhere in Nigeria, yet housing deficits keep increasing on a daily bases?
First and foremost, we have problem of data. You see, for us to say we have shortfall in our shelter, there must be adequate data in terms of how many are we? Then, what is the stratum of that population, where are this population? From there, you can now determine the actual deficiency that we have. But what we now have is people on their own crazy to buy land. Even the estate developers, what they do is looking for land especially in Lagos here because I know the rate at which they are building in Lagos is not the same at which they build in Ibadan, in Akure and other city centers or Abeokuta. The rate differs. This is because we have special case in Lagos, everything is profitable in Lagos and so people see housing as one of the profitable ventures. They knew that if they put it down, people will buy and this is why you see people building all over the places. The estate developers, everybody are just running up here and there building houses, selling them and making money. If you want to make a quick one, you go to real estate. That is why you see all of them making money from all sources and bringing them to build houses and make money. Go to Lekki Corridor you will imagine yourself whether, with all these houses why are we still having housing deficits? They are not building room and parlour, they are building duplexes, flats. Those people that are building houses are not that category of people.
We are having rent increase every year, what do you think could be done to stem the tide of increasing rents in Nigeria?
If you talk about inflation in Nigeria. Inflation now is above 20 per cent. So, that, now affects everything we do. The funny thing in Nigeria is that when something goes up, hardly will you see it coming down. That is our albatross but very unfortunate. But we need to look at all the prices of the building materials and see how to bring them down. To bring them down, you have to think about the companies too, how to help them. They complain about high cost of power. All these things are very important if you want to have low price in rents.
Do you think real estate needs a single regulator?
Real estate in terms of those doing massive construction work need to be regulated. But most of the practicing ones, they don’t belong to any association. They are just on their own but aside from belonging to association in the locality you are in, government need to regulate them, know them, let them come and register. Say…Mr. A, B, C are the people working with us and these are the capacity they have. The developers need to be registered, they need to be controlled and monitored. The moment they are registered and you control them, there will be sanity in the sector. The local government will say, it doesn’t know a developer working in a site under its domain yet no effort to get the developers in the local government registered. So, every local government should be interested in the major contractors working in its jurisdiction and know where the project is. Everybody needs to come together, work together for them to be able to achieve zero tolerance in the real estate. It is everybody’s business, it should not be left for government alone. For it to succeed, if you are walking around and see something, you should say something. Whether it is wrong or right, it is just a matter of calling the government agency or the authority’s attention to it. If the agency sees that everybody is interested in what it is doing, it will follow the rules because the public eyes are on it.
Do you think that Architects, Surveyors, Town Planners, Builders and the likes can be under a single regulator?
Nooo, nobody is calling them to be under a single regulator. They all operate in the real estate but you know each of these professionals mentioned in the built environment, they have their regulatory bodies. Town Planners regulatory body, Architects have their regulatory body, Surveyors have their regulatory body all established by law of the Federal Government. So all these professional bodies, all have their regulators who check what they do and whether they are qualified to do it. If they mess up with what they do, the regulator sanctions them. So that one is there already. At least, the regulatory bodies are doing their best to achieve sanity in their professions. This happens if you see someone doing something wrong and you bring it to the knowledge of the regulatory body, but, if nobody is complaining, they will assume all is well when something is wrong somewhere. We have all the regulatory bodies state by state in the federation to supervise and monitor activities of their professional members.