PEOPLES DAILY, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 6, 2013
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We’ll remove bottlenecks to land-titling – FG
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s housing development stakeholders continue to lobby for the repeal of the Land Use Act to make land more available for housing development, the chairman, Presidential Technical Committee on Land Reform, Prof. Peter Adeniyi has said the Federal Government has no plan to repeal the Act. In several presentations to the Presidency and the National
Assembly, housing stakeholders, including property developers, estate surveyors and valuers had called for the repeal of the Land Use Act saying the power it gave state governors to control land allocation in their states had politicized land administration and made it cumbersome, expensive and time-consuming to obtain land and title rights for housing development. They had argued that a repeal of the Act
would enhance affordable housing development and drastically reduce Nigeria’s estimated deficit of 16 million housing units. But while speaking with newsmen at the weekend, Prof. Adeniyi revealed that the Federal Government would not repeal the Land Use Act. According to him, “It is important at this point to state categorically that the land reform programme
of the Federal Government is not intended to repeal the Land Use Act or usurp the powers of the state governors and local government chairmen in land administration or deny individuals or communities the right to their lands”. While noting that land reform is critical in achieving President Goodluck Jonathan’s transformation agenda, he said the federal government’s land
reform was focused on identifying and removing bottlenecks hindering land titling and registration process within the current land administration system in Nigeria. He said his committee was working on pilot schemes in Kano and Ondo states involving identification and registration of title rights that may usher in a new land administration system in Nigeria.
Experts identify obstacles to housing development in Nigeria
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state surveyors and real estate practitioners who concluded a two-day international conference on housing held at Lagos have identified the following as obstacles to housing development in Nigeria. Low Income Nigerians have a per capita income of about $1000, about half our National per capital income in 1975. Despite the high oil revenue of the last three decades, poverty has remained with us in Nigeria. Poverty in Nigeria used to be rural-based but between 1985 and 1992, the number of the poor in rural areas fell sharply from 25.3 million to 22.8 million while those in urban centers rose from 9.7 to 11.9. A low income is a big constraint in accessing affordability because mortgage is all about the ability to service loan when due. For this reason the majority of Lagosians live in rooming houses (73 per cent) as tenants. Singapore which was our peer in the early sixties has managed to house up to 85 percent of its citizens in owneroccupied flats and houses. Dearth of Long-Term Funds High rates of interest and inflation have been typical features of our volatile economy since the introduction of Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) in 1986. The Naira has suffered extensive depreciation averaging 45 percent per annum between 1987 and 1993, from an exchange rate of N1.0 to $1.0 in 1987 to N120.0 to $1.0. Because most of our building materials have traditionally been imported, the effect of this depreciation has been a rapid rise in cost of construction. Interest rate has been similarly high at times as high as 72 percent in 1995: became stable around 18 percent after conclusion of the
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eal Estate Developers Association of Nigeria (REDAN), has called for a national strategy to boost the development of low cost housing and social housing in Nigeria. Among its proposed options is the need for governments at the various levels to compel estate developers in high brow areas like Ikoyi, Lekki, Asokoro in Abuja, Port Harcourt to incorporate in their schemes, low cost housing for the workers that are serving
banking consolidation; but now on the rise again as a result of current global financial meltdown. The combined effect of these has been a sharp rise on the price of homes. The inability of Nigerian banks to harness savings from the people has been a major reason for the lack of long-term funds in the economy. The commercial banks have traditionally served only the mercantile class and lately the oil and manufacturing sector. The Primary Mortgage Institutions and microfinance
teams are recent efforts to harness savings from the masses but they are mainly urban based and operate more or less like banks with very high appetite for quick profit. High Cost of Construction Our refusal to build houses with locally available materials has been a major cog in the wheel of housing delivery. A look at our urban centers will show that our houses are built mostly of imported materials (cement, iron rods, aluminum roof). Low Level of Economic
Activity Statistic recently release by Nigerian Insurance Commission indicates that only about 15 million Nigerians are in regular employment. The vast majority are still employed in subsistence agriculture or in menial services like okada riding. The level of industrialization is low so also is commerce which is characterized by street trading. Though the oil industry is strong but it is unfortunately not linked to the
local economy. The combination of these factors is that the disposable income of the average Nigerian is low to build a house or qualify for mortgage assistance. Access to Land The main objective of the Land Use Act was to facilitate access to land by the generality of Nigerians. Unfortunately the act has had the opposite effect. Though it has made it easier for the elite to acquire land, it has made it much harder for the majority of Nigerians to access land.
FMBN, REDAN meet on affordable housing residents and owners of high end properties in these estates. This means that ongoing and new developments in high brow areas must make provisions for the low and medium income groups with 10 per cent of houses in such estates set aside for the low income group, another 10 per cent for the medium income earners and the balance of 80 per
cent set aside for the high income group. To achieve this, REDAN is facilitating a meeting of stakeholders, including the Minister of Housing, Federal Housing Authority (FHA) and the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria (FMBN). According to a REDAN official, Mr. Shola Enitan, the association is also
canvassing support for social housing provision whereby people in distress can be temporarily accommodated in decent government houses before they are able to sort themselves out. “Except for the destitute, there must be a place of temporary abode for a family, who may have accommodation crisis, either with their landlords
or by other means. No Nigerian should be allowed to spend all his earnings paying house rent to landlords, either private landlord or government for ever, and in a situation by which government is the landlord, the tenants must have the opportunity to buying off the apartment at the long run without much sweat,”