After over three decades of wasting away, serving no purpose other than sitting on prime land in a prime location, time has come for the old Federal Secretariat in Ikoyi, Lagos, to be taken to the next level in line with President Muhammadu Buhari administration’s ‘next level’ agenda.
A national monument, in its own right, the federal secretariat represents a colossal waste in the midst of scarcity and want. It is one of the ‘dead assets’ in Nigeria that makes the need and call for land and property ownership reform in the country not only imperative but also urgent.
Nigeria has a rigid traditional land tenure system that hampers full scale economic activities on land. This system is reason for the country’s low industrialisation, housing development, agriculture, and other economic and productive activities that lead to improved standard of living, job creation and economic growth.
The same rigid land tenure system is reason for the huge waste the federal secretariat in Lagos have become just like other national monuments scattered all over the country.
The secretariat, which provided office space for federal civil servants while Lagos served as federal capital, was part of the Federal Government’s properties in Lagos that were offloaded into the property market between 2003 and 2006 by the Olusegun Obasanjo administration in the country.
Wale Babalakin’s Resort International Limited which acquired the property had the intention of redeveloping it into residential apartments that would have provided homes for a good number of families but was stalled by the Lagos State government.
By that singular action, over 50 families have been denied the opportunity of owning their own homes. Taking an average of eight persons comprising father, mother, four children and two dependants, per family, it means that about 400 persons would have had shelters over their head.
This would also have helped to reduce the country’s housing demand-supply gap which is put officially at 17 million units. This figure is already a subject of debate as some experts argue that because of population growth, especially with the yearly increase in the number of young people leaving school and needing their own homes.
Of all the 36 states of the federation plus the federal capital territory, Lagos with its larger than size population, has the highest housing deficit estimated at three million units that requires about 200,000 houses to be built every year for the next 10-20 years to bridge.
It is expected that the state would support any private sector initiative that would put additional housing unit on its housing market to help close its housing supply gap. But this consideration seems not to have been given to Resort International Limited.
Among other things, the state government demanded that Resort International must obtain a fresh Certificate of Occupancy (C of O) from the state government, irrespective of documents issued by the Federal Government on the property. The company was also required to apply for the consent of the Lagos governor on the property; apply for a change of use as well as a development permit.
Resort International had considered the demand by the state government inconsistent with the Development Lease Agreement (DLA) which it had entered into with the Federal Government in 2006 which granted it 99 years’ lease to redevelop the secretariat complex into luxury apartments.
It therefore, took the Federal Government to an Arbitration Tribunal where it claimed that it had suffered damages totalling N88 billion as a result of the breach of a clause of the DLA by the government.
Though the Tribunal, chaired by Fred Adeniyi Coker, an architect, supported by a legal practitioner, Yusuf Alli, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), and former Attorney General of the Federation, Abdullahi Ibrahim, ordered FG to pay N54 billion in damages to the company, it is still hazy whether this ruling has been complied with.
Even though people are worried about all the pussy-fussy movements around this monument, they are more concerned about the waste it has been subjected to, hence the need for the current government to step in to resolve all the issues around the asset so that it could be put to use.
BusinessDay checks reveal that the value of that asset, including the land and the physical structure, is about N40 billion and it could have been more if the asset had been in use. “That asset is standing on prime land; don’t forget that it is in Ikoyi which is one of the most expensive, if not the most expensive, locations in Nigeria”, an estate surveyor and valuer, who pleaded anonymity, told BusinessDay in an interview on the value of the asset.
“A lot of things are very difficult to understand in this country”, says Johnson Chukwuma, a structural engineer who is deeply worried that a high profile national asset like that secretariat is allowed to waste away and lose its value on daily basis because of parochial interests.
“I am still in doubt if it is really the Lagos State government that is holding down the redevelopment of that facility into residential apartments to provide homes for the residents of the state”, Chukwuma stated in an interview.
CHUKA UROKO
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