There has been much talk about government’s intention to boost liquidity in mortgage market, refinance housing loans and private capital going into different building projects for Nigerians. Yet, evidence of affordable housing is scarce in many slum communities across the country. TEMITAYO AYETOTO reports the condition of Nigerians who live in squalor.
When Lagos is tossed in the air like a coin and it dances far into highbrow edges in Lekki, Victoria Island or Ikoyi, before rolling back to another edge in Ikeja, Magodo or Surulere, it could eventually settle on a flip side in Ijora-Badia – a swampy and water-logged settlement occupied by low-income Lagosians.
This is where living on the throes of squalor is a daily struggle to nod ‘yes’ to life. Mostly makeshift, the houses on Baale Street, for instance, are not the sorts that enjoy lush display on the cover of a fancy real estate magazine which might be tucked in the seat of an airlift to London. Neither do these buildings qualify for listing on property marketing websites.
Here, there are blocks of multiple rooms constructed from patches of planks and the foundation is built from strong round woods that can endure the pressure of water. The streets are tarred and adorned with heap of trash as a measure to strengthen the soil against water.
Consequently, residents usually don’t set foot on ground. They move around on a long stretch of flat wooden stand (makeshift bridge) that travels along central paths linking various homes. At some disconnects, medium-size stones are set for stepping before the journey continues again.
Residents rely basically on open well-water for washing, bathing and cleaning, while they resort to sachet water or tap-water for consumption. When there is electricity supply from the national grid, Abiodun Gafar, a nursing mother, spends at least N800 on water, which she has to lift on head.
Call it a shantytown, slum or an irritant of a sprawling metropolis, this is where Olasoji Oladunni, a contract staff of the biggest telecommunication company in Nigeria, by subscriber base, MTN, raises his three boys alone. As a cost control measure, Oladunni has a bicycle that takes him every day to Saka-Tinubu, Victoria Island, where an MTN mast is located. He generally maintains security and monitors engineers who have to work on the server room.
For him, it’s a sharp contrast to work during the day in an environment surrounded by asphalt-laid roads, exquisitely furnished buildings and people with polished disposition but eat, bathe and sleep in filthiness at night. The reality pierces his emotion more profoundly when a harmless question of where he lives comes up.
“Friends who want to know more about me ask me where I stay. But then I say God, if I tell this person that I’m from Ijora, he will say I’m one of those people who throw bottles. So, I find it hard to say this is where I stay because I know what the area means; is not nice,” Oladunni explained to BDSUNDAY.
Unlike other plank-made buildings, Oladunni’s home is built from cement which makes the leasing rate higher at around N2, 500 and N3, 000 monthly per room. For makeshift apartments such as the one in which Matilda Temiotan, 50, lives in, renting dangles around N1, 500 and N2, 000, monthly depending on the bargaining strength of the taker.
Typical of slum structures in the vicinity, the bathroom at Temiotan’s residence is assembled from a few pieces of planks, without any roofing and it’s cited some distance away from the 10-room bungalow. Oddly, yet commonplace, there is no toilet. The unwritten but general rule is to defecate and dispose openly in the nearby canal.
Lagosians in this type of dwelling desperately seek good housing but want it inexpensive. They want basic facilities like electricity, good water supply, healthy ventilation, good drainages and roads. In fact, the financial weakness that plunge people under this poor living condition is such that makes them care less about colour themes, brands of furniture or latest interior furnishings.
Some of the inhabitants, like Oluwagbotemi Samuel, a casual staff of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) in Apapa, has earned less than N15, 000 monthly for 13 years. Yet, he caters for six children.
At 58 Baale Street, just behind Oladunni’s home, 64-year-old Justus Owowa’s single room has been converted to a school named ‘Olu Nursery and Primary School’. There, the passionate teacher and indigene of Igbokoda, Ilaje Local Government Area of Ondo State teaches about 100 kids. And in what highlights the poor state of their household economies, Owowa only charges parents N50 each for teaching them to read and write. He believes it is not enough for the pupils to speak in English. They should possess the ability to identify, interpret and write what they speak.
“You will discover most of them can speak well, but to put it into writing is zero. I prefer they can put into writing what they are saying. I group them into classes according to their ability,” Owowa said.
Amid this squalor, a few new buildings are also sprouting along the canal lines right in Ijora-Badia. But these property investors are not considering residential use. The bungalows function as bars and inns – bubbling with blistering echoes of latest Nigerian hip-hop hit songs. Young men and ladies in catchy outfits dot the precincts. Many there say it is the fastest moving business, found more profitable than investing in residential buildings.
Already, history records Ijora-Badia as one of Lagos’ underserviced and high density areas. Many early inhabitants of Ijora-Badia were people who resettled from Oluwole Village, when it was acquired by the government for the construction of the National Theatre. The resettlement brought more people to live close to the railway tract.
Formal framework exclusion
According to a 2015 World Bank report on Lagos Metropolitan Development and Governance, a project that cost $205 million, Nigeria has been urbanising at an average annual growth rate of 3.75 percent since 2010 and with the trend continuing, the share of Nigerians living in urban areas is expected to rise to 55 percent of the total population by 2020.
However, non-inclusive housing schemes exclude millions of Nigerian urban residents like Oladunni, Owowa and Temiotan who earn less than N20, 000 salaries from access to formal affordable housing. They constitute about 60-80 percent of urban Nigerians estimated to live in squatter settlements where they suffer from limited access to services, unhealthy living environments and exclusion from economic opportunities that urban areas offer.
The formal housing supply, estimated at about 100,000 units per year, is far-fetched from current demand nearing one million units per year. The deficit was estimated to range between 20million and 30 million in 2014, but the government continues to dismiss the projection on grounds that it lacks clarity of methodology.
In the report, the World Bank highlights affordability as a huge challenge since the formal housing market does not serve low-income households and public housing projects over the last 30 years.
An instance of such is the Lagos Home Ownership Mortgage Scheme (Lagos HOMS) transformed into a Rent-to-Own housing programme under Akinwunmi Ambode administration. Rather than a 30 percent equity contribution previously set for beneficiaries, the policy slashed it to 5 percent for possession to be taken, with the balance meant to be paid as rent towards the ownership of the property over a period of 10 years.
It was designed enhance access to affordable homesfor first-time buyers who are residents of Lagos State. A bedroom apartment available as at the middle of August at Odo-Onosa, Agbowa was put up at a unit price of N1 million, N100, 000 as upfront payment and N21,093 as monthly repayment plan. A two-bedroom at Iponri Estate, Surulere has the unit price as N20 million, N1 million as 5 percent down payment and N210, 938 as monthly repayment.
But as auspicious as the scheme seems, hardly can the economically weaker section pass the affordability test, which requires that applicants make the 5 percent commitment fee payment and must not spend more than 33 percent of their monthly income as repayment.
At the federal level, there are signs of effort on the path of Nigeria Mortgage Refinancing Company (NMRC) which refinanced 1045 mortgages to the tune of N18 billion between 2015 and 2018, a BusinessDay report in the first quarter of 2019 confirmed. The company’s mandate is to promote affordable home ownership in the country by leveraging funding from the capital market to deepen liquidity in the primary and secondary mortgage markets. Yet, again, the evidence of this is still scarce in areas of need such as Ijora-Badia, Ajegunle, Okokomaiko, Amukoko, Badia, Bariga, Ijeshatedo, Iwaya, Makoko, among others.
Addressing why housing development capital tends to ignore the type of housing needed by below-minimum wage earners, some real estate stakeholders who spoke to BDSUNDAY came to a consensus that affordable housing does not have to do with cost alone. They say it has to do with the ability of those low income earners to afford it. It is believed that those who earn on the lowest cadre still can afford a house given a mortgage system that makes the house affordable.
Equally, concerns were raised over questions of the cost of land not coming cheap and how that translates into meeting the requirement of poor people.
“Whether we like it or not, the present construction environment does make buildings cheap. Are you going to construct without cement when a bag of cement is N2,600. We can’t construct without timber materials, no matter how lean the building is. If you want to buy a tipper of sand, you know how much it cost,” Kunle Awobudu told BDSUNDAY.
The builder observed that people without regular source of income might disrupt the official arrangement of mortgage except it comes as assistance. He said: “it will require some form of economic formula to make it effective, since the purchasing power is very low.”
Rotimi Akindipe, the chief executive officer, Groveworld Realties Limited, a real estate company, stressed that government’s input in planning neighbourhoods remains key and not just about the quality of housing, but also about the quality of neighbourhoods and the beautiful ambience that support living.
“There is something you call urban renewal which is a concept of development too. There is nothing wrong in bringing good roads to Badia; bringing pipe-borne water to Badia; having play areas in Badia or having good schools and good hospitals in Badia. If we have all these things, Badia will not be the same we are talking about,” Akindipe said.
The World Bank believes cities can play a key role in promoting inclusive growth by facilitating productivity as well as efficient service delivery for all citizens.
Home improvement loans rescue
Slums structures do not exist without real owners. There are thousands of houses that are structurally sound across the country but have broken windows, leaking roofs and all they need for improvement is 20 percent of what was needed to build the house newly. The lack of surrounding infrastructure also keeps them in slummy condition.
What they need is improvement loans for retrofitting and upgrading, says Timothy Nubi, founding director, Centre for Housing & Sustainable Development.When they improve where they are, the tenants there will live in a befitting environment.
“What they need is infrastructure upgrading. Make the people come together. Profile them and give them home improvement loan. Not everyone that goes to mortgage banks needs money to build new houses,” Nubi, the immediate past Dean, Faculty of Environmental Sciences, the University of Lagos said.
“We have not really sat down to define our housing need. Then, we would be able to identify those that are challenged and vulnerable. All over the world, there are people called street sleepers, they sleep at train stations and bust stops. Government pick them up and clean them up, train, and become tax-payers.We need to get the architecture right for housing in Nigeria.The government has a constitutional responsibility to provide housing for different set of people.”
Chicago: from a Midwestern settlement town to a towering City
In 1833, Chicago was a wilderness outpost of just 350 residents, clumped around a small military fort on soggy land where the Chicago River trickled into Lake Michigan. By the end of the century, this desolate swamp had been transformed into a modern metropolis of 1.7 million, known for its dense web of railroads, efficient slaughterhouses, fiery furnaces, and soaring skyscrapers.
Chicago’s rise was so sudden and so astounding. The city sits between the Great Lakes and Mississippi River watersheds, making it possible for people working or living there to travel by boat all the way to the Atlantic Ocean or to the Gulf of Mexico. But geography alone would not secure the city. Chicago’s growth, like that of many other American cities, was also predicated on government-led engineering projects and the mastery of its water. Between the 1830s and 1900, lawmakers, engineers, and thousands of long-forgotten labourers created a new, manmade geography for Chicago, building a canal and sewers, raising city streets, and even reversing a river. These monumental feats of engineering spurred Chicago’s miraculous growth, and provided a model for other American cities to engineer their way to success.
In swampy cities like Chicago, waterborne diseases like cholera thrived. By 1854, the city had survived epidemics of cholera, typhoid, and dysentery, killing as many as 1,500 people at a time. Though scientists had not yet identified the germs that caused these diseases, even casual observers understood that illness spread in places with poor drainage. In 1850, the newspaper Gem of the Prairie observed, for example, that parts of Chicago were swamps like Ijora Badia, the gutters running with filth at which swine turn up their noses. The only solution was a thorough system of drainage.
Chicago’s city’s experiences suggest that is something continually made and remade by people and governments. The model of growth, based on government-led water engineering projects was duplicated by other cities such as Los Angeles and Las Vegasin the 20th century.
This history shows that if a government is committed to studying welfare problems and defining solutions for each context, affordable housing will not just be about a rush for the city centre. It will also be about reposing the confidence to live in rural areas of the city with reassurance of basic amenities for good living and unhindered transport infrastructure to and from the city centre.
