From Tony John, Port Harcourt
The Mayor of Housing, Mr My-Ace China, has commended the Rivers State Governor, Siminalayi Fubara, for his 20,000 low-cost housing initiative for the state.
China expressed this while answering questions from newsmen at the sidelines of the DMOMA Awards 2023, where he received the Real Estate Personality of the Year 2023 award in Port Harcourt, Rivers State on Monday night.
The real estate expert said he was excited by the governor’s initiative to achieve the 20,000 housing scheme through Public Private Partnership (PPP) engagement.
He noted that government has always failed whenever it wants to carry out housing policy independently.
China expressed: “I am quite elated because when he announced his social housing policy on his inauguration day (May 29, 2023) I was one of the first persons to react and commend him.
“He has now activated the necessary policy action to implement it. We have been curiously and eagerly waiting for how it would be implemented.
“The houses are important but the model or process to the accessibility of the houses is even more important. There is need to see behind the housing scheme a self-auditing, self-sustaining and self-duplicating and fool-proof system to people to have access these houses.
“If the process has these mechanisms, the administration would know that it has not only provided houses, but it has created a system to continually provide houses in the state. It would start a chain reaction of houses from the private sector. I am eagerly awaiting and I am elated.
“What I am excited about is the public private partnership (PPP) approach Governor Siminalayi Fubara has used. Even the PPP is not enough. Direct building of houses by government has never worked; and this one is not government building houses directly.
“What I am excited about is the public private partnership (PPP) approach Governor Siminalayi Fubara has used. Even the PPP is not enough.”
The Mayor of Housing added that the greatest booster to solving the 28 million housing deficit in Nigeria is an enabling environment in the sector.
China continued: “In fact, the way President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is going around the globe looking for investors, shows that the government leaders do not know that we have a large army of investors already in the country.
“These home-based investors face huge huddles in most of the sectors including in housing. You will not imagine the setbacks and bureaucratic bottlenecks we face in starting a construction effort.
“Most times, those huddles lead to higher costs for the eventual houses because every huddle you overcome costs you more money and you have to recover the cost.
“When the ease of doing business (EODB), ease of documentation, ease of layout, ease of allocation, and tax incentives are given to well-known developers like us, believe you me, the result will be nothing short of a boom in the property and housing sector.
“We (The Construction & Housing Mayor Limited) are an example of those people managing to crawl against the tide. When the government turns the tide in our favour, we will not only fly, we will do wonders.”
According to him, with easy Certificate of Occupancy and ease of doing business, Rivers State could get 200,000 new houses in same period.
China said: “The Fubara administration just announced 20,000 houses to be built. When the environment is made better with the things I mentioned above, the private sector can build 10 times that number (200,000 houses) within the same period.
“Every private investor is driven by three things: ease of doing business in that location, security of doing business in that location, and support of the powers that be in that location to show that your business is ensured. The moment these three factors are in place, the location or the sector will witness a boom.”