The unavailability of basic infrastructure in Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial city is a nightmare tormenting residents in the state. This is despite the huge amount of money in the form of development levy to the government. Estate residents are suffering years of neglect, forcing many to resort in self-help by funding infrastructure from personal pockets, writes Endurance Okafor & Michael Ani
Nnamdi Okereke, a businessman in his late 50s, had to spend the night inside his vehicle, after moving into his new house in Prayer Estate, a suburb around Amuwo-Odofin L.GA, Lagos.
Okereke’s decision to spend the night outside his home wasn’t as a result of him forgetting the keys; it was simply due to the dilapidated road in his estate that was worsened by a heavy downpour and a lack of good drainage system.
When going to his business, he is forced to leave his home with his trousers rolled up to his knees, and his shoes held in one part of his hands while moving on bare feet in the muddy water in reach for his car which he parked some miles away from the estate.
Every passing day, the situation becomes unbearable for Okereke, especially during the rainy season. The situation got so bad to the extent that at some point he thought of leaving his mansion for a rented apartment in other areas where he could at least enjoy basic amenities.
Sitting in one of the corners in the estate, enjoying the gentle breeze of the morning, Okereke and some of his neighbours, narrated the ordeal to our correspondents.
SEE ALSO: Housing Estates in Lagos reel from lack of infrastructure
I moved into the estate in 2007, he said. At that time, there were no roads. There were also no electricity poles or wires to connect, to allow me to enjoy power.
Buying a plot of land in the estate, I was forced by the Lagos state government to pay a huge sum of N600,000 as capital development levy.
When I asked what the money was used for, I was made to believe it’s for the provision of infrastructure including roads, effective drainage system, water and electricity, amongst others.
This money was different from the Land Use Charge and other levies I paid when coming in, he said
But it’s over 13 years down the line, and Okereke still wonders what has been with the huge amount paid to the government for developmental activities as the infrastructural crisis in the estate has moved from bad to worse.
This has become a thorn in the flesh for him as on several occasions his house gets flooded with water when there is a heavy downpour, because of the lack of drainage system.
The long years of pains felt by Okereke offers a clue on the suffering in which other owners of the over 350 plots of land in ‘Prayer Estate’ goes through just for owning a house.
“We have written and written to the state government to get their attention to see the plight we go through all day, but it has been to no avail,” Okereke said.
A Long year of infrastructural neglect in estate means residents like Okereke and others had to take the bull by the horn. In the wake of falling income and a low standard of income, the residents had to deep hands in their pockets, to fund public infrastructure.
So far, residents in the estate have made over N200 million voluntary contributions into funding the needed basic amenities.
When BusinessDay visited the Estate, some on-going projects including roads, electricity and water, funded from private pockets have begun.
Checks by BusinessDay shows residents of the estate have constructed a new 7000 square meters of interlock roads, added to the 1000 square meters which they had earlier built.
They had also bought two 500kva and one 300kva transformers, and had mounted street lights, bought poles and wires to run electricity to their homes.
Covets and the drainage system has also been improved upon.
Meanwhile, it should be the responsibility of the government to provide basic infrastructure for the citizens using taxpayer’s money.
With an approximate 350 plots situated in the estate, some N210 million may have been paid as capital development levy to the government, according to BusinessDay estimates. This excludes other forms of taxes paid to the government yet no visible infrastructure projects to show for.
“I also paid for building approval but since that time, there has been no form of development or construction whatsoever from the state government,” another resident in the estate said, wondering why the government would neglect an area as theirs where every house has a Certificate of Occupancy (CofO), and are up to date in paying taxes.
The plight faced by residents of ‘Prayer Estate’ mirrors the challenges encountered by taxpayers living in a state like Lagos.
Checks by BusinessDay shows that estates in other parts of Lagos have had to embark on key projects on their own after hopes of waiting for the government to fund infrastructure appears to be fading.
From lack of good road network, water and street lights that have worsened the security situation in a state like Lagos, the country’s biggest commercial city, is enveloped in a huge infrastructural crisis that appears to have overwhelmed the government.
The absence of drainages and other infrastructure such as roads have forced gully erosion on many parts of states forcing residents to resort to self-help projects and other desperate means to stave off environmental degradation.
Aside from the fact that Lagos is bedevilled with a poor road network, the few available roads have been taken under siege by trucks and tanker drivers who have turned the roads to their places of abode.
This has turned to a constant nightmare and a loss of productivity for its over 20 million populace as they have to spend long hours in traffic daily to engage in their day to day activities, with the state for the third consecutive time, topping the list of 140 cities to emerge worst place to live in the world, according to 2019 global liveability index by the Economist Intelligence Unit.
Only 44 percent of the state is covered by public water supply and this serves less than 16 per cent of the population, based on official data.
Housing anywhere in the world is a basic necessity, which in the order of human needs ranks third after food and clothing, but with one of the lowest homeownership rates in Africa, Nigeria’s infrastructural challenge remains a barrier to individual efforts at increasing housing development in the country.
Despite having the largest population in Africa, Nigeria’s infrastructure deficit which requires an annual expenditure of N36trillion is one of the reasons why Nigeria’s 25 percent homeownership rate is crawling behind Indonesia’s 84 percent, Kenya’s 75 percent and South Africa’s 56 percent.
Access to affordable housing in Nigeria is crippled by among other factors the lack of non-functioning mortgage system, high cost of property development buoyed by the country’s 41 years old Land Use Act.
Difficulties in obtaining land title, for example, means that real estate developers will have challenges in accessing lands and this also means that there would be less inventory in the market or the available products will come at a higher cost.
The latter is the case for Nigeria, a country which requires an estimated N170trillon to N200trillion to bridge its housing deficit of more than 20 million units
More than four decades after Nigeria’s Land Use Act has remained unadjusted, the difficulties in obtaining property title in Nigeria persist as over 71 percent of landlords did not have any document/Certificate of Occupancy (C of O) as of 2019.
According to the 2018-2019 Nigeria Living Standards Survey (NLSS) report by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), 71.4 percent of landlords sampled across the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) are without titles.
According to economists, if Nigeria wants to bridge its housing deficit and give affording housing to its 58.52 million people who are gainfully employed but cannot afford to buy a house, it would have to first achieve a single-digit inflation rate.
Nigeria’s inflation rate at 12.8 percent, the highest in 27 months, means negative return on investment in real terms and to edge against the country’s inflation rate, developers who obtain capital at highest interest rates transfer cost to the end-users.
The high cost of funding real estate development is, therefore, one of the reasons why the products in the market are too expensive for a lot of Nigerians to afford.
The mismatch in between the available real estate properties and the disposable income of many Nigerians further mirrors the slow pace at which the largest economy has been growing in the last five years.
The mismatch in between the available real estate properties and the disposable income of many Nigerians further mirrors the slow pace at which the largest economy has been growing in the last five years.
Since 2015 Nigeria’s economic growth rate has remained lower than the country’s population growth rate, a case of the country producing more people than it can feed.
While the GDP of the real estate sector fell sharply by –18.15 percentage points from -3.84 percent in the second quarter of 2019 to -21.99 percent in the corresponding quarter of 2020, Nigeria’s economy shrank 6.1 percent in the same quarter, the first contraction since 2017. This also implies that the economy is now a quarter away from recession.
If Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy doesn’t unlock the potentials in its property industry; death capital, resolve issues around the Land Use Act and set up a functioning mortgage system its economy will continue to move southwards, according to stakeholders from different sectors of the economy.
Unlocking the potentials in Nigeria’s real estate sector would mean more revenue from the 70 to 80 percent death capital, affordable housing for over 23 million Nigerians, lower unemployment rate and higher economic growth, the economists said.
The barriers to individual efforts in developing their real estate properties is further heightened by the lack of infrastructure as it makes it more expensive and worse for a city like Lagos which has the more people than any other city in Africa.
Being Nigeria’s commercial city, accounting for close to 30 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, Lagos infrastructure development is critical to the overall economy.
The state aims to become a 21st-century megacity but that’s impossible without a good road network and availability of other social amenities to drive investments and make life better for residents.
