Adeniji Adele

Adeniji Adele is the President of International Real Estate Federation, Nigeria. He tells MAUREEN IHUA-MADUENYI that the country’s housing crisis should be blamed on lack of effective policies
How did Nigeria’s real estate industry perform in 2019?

The year 2019 was a mixture of ups and downs in Nigeria and one can comfortably say averagely the real estate sector did not witness tremendous increase. This was all due to many factors such as decline in per capita income, issues of exchange rate, inflation and taxation. Poverty rate which has gone up also had an effect.

Inconsistency in government’s policies over the years has also had very negative impact on the real estate sector of the economy.

Some stakeholders think the hope of a total recovery for the real estate industry in 2020 might not be in sight. As an industry expert, what is your view on this?

Looking into 2020, for the real estate industry to be relatively stable, a lot of steps and proactive actions have to be put in place if we are to see changes.

Government has to be seen to implement a whole lot of solutions already proffered by various experts on this topic in the past. And nothing seems to be done except paying lip service to all professionals and experts’ advice on our damaged real estate industry as a result of our ways of doing business in this part of the world .

Year 2020 will be good for the industry if we can embrace the principles of micro and macro factors. Demographics, government policies, interest rate, economic growth as well as demand and unemployment will impact the real estate market.

But once these critical elements are tackled by various operators in the industry, the outlook in 2020 may be good. Government should create a level playing field for institutional and private developers to operate in a friendly environment supported by good fiscal policies.

Do you view housing and infrastructure policies’ implementation as well as an enabling environment as all the industry needs to grow?

Housing issue has been a very serious matter. The government should be blamed for the inadequacies and lack of proper and effective policies which had led to acute shortage of housing in our country. It is very sad and appalling.

The issues of political and social factors are among numerous challenges that have pushed us to where we are today. Infrastructure development such as roads, bridges, airports, water, sewer line and electricity are in deplorable condition.

For housing policies to be effective, the government should provide an enabling environment where private developers and institutional investors in real estate will feel secured and give confidence to the consumers that those risks have been taken away. The issues of legislation, access to land, lack of data, documentation and processing of building approval and unnecessary bureaucracy from public officials should be removed. Punishment to erring government officials involved in such cases should be encouraged.

We should also use local materials for construction rather than pay high tariff on imported building materials when our steel industry is yet to be revitalised due to several decades of corruption.

Above all, to take care of mass housing, all tiers of government must address this issue by coming up with a model on social housing schemes at the local, state and federal levels. Affordable housing policies should be the threshold. We should do away with politics and political sentiments but look at the negative impact of housing deficit on the economy in the last 20 years.

Recently, some experts called on the government to use unclaimed dividends accumulated over the decades in the procurement of social housing development. This will go a long way in reducing the shortage, especially in residential development.

Conversion of all government abandoned properties to residential development for housing estate in all states should be encouraged. Some school of thought may say Nigeria is capitalist; yes I agree, but there is capitalist social housing development, otherwise poverty levels will continue to grow unabated and the resultant effect on the so-called elite and capitalists will be very serious especially on all our metropolitan cities and towns.

Talking about metropolitan cities, what is your take on the review of master plan in parts of Lagos? Do you think this will address the issue of slum development and congestion in the state?

So much has been said about Lagos master plan review but it appears nothing has changed. This is simply due to the fact that Lagos needs to do more in the area of collaboration with other neighbouring states or it may sink one day as a result of slum development and congestion.

Most of the Government Reserved Areas, Lekki Phase 1 and axis are over-built. There are various contraventions, abuse of power and flagrant misbehaviour of staff of various agencies saddled with regulations, which are not helping government. It is all about money.

Lagos has missed it because there is no decent environment that is not violated as a result of impunity and the issue of ‘Godfather’ in our society. Residents are not left out of this mess, advance madness is the order of the on the streets of Lagos.

The master plan is grossly upside down. We all must come to face the situation squarely and do the right thing for once and know that nobody is above the law. It is only then that there will be sanity in Lagos.

Look at all the satellite cities and towns; the story is the same. The planner, environmentalist, architects, engineers, land economists, land surveyors, valuers and developers, financial institutions and government must all rise to fight this imminent danger that is fast coming upon Lagos, if we must have a happy city and happy people in a friendly environment.

Another problem that must be tackled is the issue of roundabouts in the state. All roundabouts in Lekki corridor and others in Lagos should be removed and replaced with traffic signals with effective implementation of sanctions on offenders. With this, there will be sanity and discipline in our society.

As the president of the Nigerian chapter of an international organisation, what are the changes you think need to happen for the country to be at par with its counterparts?

I think we need a lot of collaborations, especially among professionals. At FIABCI, we believe so much in the power of collaborations for knowledge sharing and innovation in real estate and other sectors of the economy.

Source :Punch