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Maduka Nweke
Chudi Ubosi, is an Estate Surveyor and Valuer and a Partner in the firm of Ubosi- Eleh and Company .The Estate Surveyor and Valuers firm has been in practice for close to 29 years. It runs a general practice with seven offices across Nigeria. Ubosi, a member of Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) , is also a member of International Real Estate Federation (FIABCI).
A former President for FIABCI for the African Region who completed his six years tenure as President in 2018, Ubosi also real estate practice in Ontario, Canada. A member of Real Estate Ontario Association, Sales Broker, who registered as a broker in Ontario Real Estate Association, he has seen it all in the built environment. In this interview with PropertyMart, he fielded questions on why building collapse may continue to remain a recurrent decimal in Nigeria’s construction industry. He provides solutions on how to not only to ameliorate the menace but also to exterminate it entirely.
Excerpts
Assessment of Estate Surveyor and Valuer practice in Nigeria
Of course there has been a lot of changes compared to what we met on ground. At the moment, the profession is undergoing a lot of changes. What we had twenty years ago is not what we have today. For example, twenty years ago, it was very difficult for a landlords to allow you advertise their property in the newspapers, whether for sale or lease and so on. There are all kind of social media sales today. In fact all landlords will even give their property to the widest publicity whatever. We are getting better in various areas. That is, the challenges in the practice is what we see throughout the economy. The poor economy is not helping decision making in the real estate, decisions in terms of who is buying property, in terms of who is taking office space, in terms of businesses relocating into Nigeria, who wants office space. So, the poor economic situation we find ourselves has not helped the real estate practices. There are challenges for those who are into development, those who build and sell. Again, the problem is there. You built, you cannot sell; many a time, they are just having marginal profit over what you have expended. And basically, it is generally a tough time in the last couple of years. But, a lot of practitioners are in this business for a long time. So we hope that even what we are experiencing now will be a short time thing, because sooner or later, the boom will come.
Your strategies for ameliorating building collapse incidents in Nigeria
The issue of building collapse is one that gives everybody serious cause for worry. But a building does not just collapse. A building doesn’t just collapse in one day. Before a building collapses, there will be a lot of points showing that a building is really having problems. Starting from the foundation, if you have the wrong foundations, then you have set yourself up for a building collapse. I will give an example; how many Nigerians actually take a soil test before going into construction of many buildings? How many, as much as government requires it? Many of us often think that these are unnecessary bottlenecks and impediments that government sets in the way of developers and builders so that they can make money. But, no, the government is actually doing the right thing by insisting that you submit yourself to certain checks, more or less soil test. Soil test will tell you the kind of foundation that you need in that particular terrain and your development to be carried in the proposed number of floors you want to have. But we have a situation where people don’t even follow any of those rules. Then, going forward, you have people using poor or non professionals who are not qualified. In fact, you think that because the man has proposed cheaper costs or cheaper construction cost than somebody else that will save you a lot of money, then you think that, that is the best way to go. More often than not, it is not, rather you are only setting yourself up for failure. From the foundation up wards, the signs must be there. The wrong use of materials, the poor or the wrong professionals or inadequate knowledge of the site. All these things set up a lot of development for failure. If not immediately during construction, it will come a few years post construction when the building gets to use. Then the stress begins to tell from various areas that the failure was in construction.
Rating performance of estate/ construction monitors
If truth must be told, many of these groups that have oversight on construction projects are not really working. Many of them are not working and it is not necessarily their fault, many of these groups are underfunded. They don’t have enough personnel, they don’t have resources. Take a typical example; you want somebody to monitor development in Lekki, he has no vehicles to drive to site. Even if he goes by public transport, how much can he do on a daily basis? Supervision we talk about is not a one day business to the site. It is a visit that is continuous. It is a business that is continuous and it must be maintained at the various stages of the construction. These public servants’ oversight must come but you find out that even if they make it there once or twice, the difficulty and the lack of resources they have, make it difficult for them to take it as a continuous thing. Once that issue of continuity is no longer there, it therefore gives the development open to abuse, makes the developer open to take shortcuts which at the end of the day can lead to some of these building collapse you see.
Why many developers don’t use services of professionals or don’t take instructions from the monitors
The way I usually answer this question is; many times a real estate development investment is the largest investment that 95 per cent of individuals worldwide will make in their life time. If that is correct, then, why would you like to cut corners when you have the whole opportunity to make that kind of investment. That is one. Two; yes, you want to cut corners, you want to minimize the costs, you want to use cheap and non professionals, somebody tells you; I have been working for a site for 30 years.
This does not mean he is a professional. The fact that you work in a bakery does not make you a baker or make you a loaf of bread as a friend of mine say. Because a butcher cuts meat and been able to maneuver around the heart, cut out parts and all, that does not make him a surgeon. Because you can go to a butcher and say cut this part for me cannot make you a surgeon. Why can’t we do that when we get to real estate development where we make the largest single investment in our life time. So, a lot of times, it is actually penny wise pound foolish as they say because if you cut corners at this beginning, you pay for it down the road. These are things you see in many, many developments. When it rains, the roofs are leaking. You will see development where after a few months, the pipes are leaking, you see developments where the doors are one the side, the handles have fallen off. These developments that are completed may be a couple of months before people moved in. So, it is only a question of penny wise but at the end of the day we are pound foolish.
Housing for Nigeria’s 200m people, the farce and realty
There is absolutely no structure on ground to shelter this population if indeed we are 198 million. Our housing deficits for many many years has been that, it is at 17 million units depending on who you are talking to. The truth is that if our population is the size which we say it is, our housing deficits should be well over 25 million units. Now, what is on ground to house this 25 million people or provide accommodation for over 25 million people from the housing market? There is very little. One is that the government can never do it alone because it is not a public sector driven. It has to be public and private sector partnerships. The government provides the enabling environment, the private sector go into developments to be able to meet the needs of the masses in housing. When we talk about this 25 million, 17 million units, let me use 17 million. When we talk about it, you find out that the most number of housing that is needed are actually those at the lower bottom of the pyramid.
Starting like a pyramid being at the lowest income ropes. That is where the most housing is needed and if we have 17 million people, you will find out that 75 per cent of that fall within the low income rope which is maybe housing that is worth from zero to N8 or N10 million. Now, is that possible in Nigeria today? Do you have research facilities today to provide research into all these? Maybe the research are not coming out or that they are not being used. But we need to go into cheaper production of houses if we want to be able to house this population. We need to provide adequate mortgage. Yes, we have the federal mortgage, finance and federal mortgage of Nigeria.
