Chief Austin Oguejiofor is an estate developer. In an interview, he expresses optimism that providing affordable housing accommodation for the teeming Nigerian population is feasible.
The President recently gave a directive that affordable houses should be made available for civil servants. Has this directive seen the light of the day?
Yes, following that Presidential directive, the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) has allotted plots of land in the FCT for the construction of houses for Federal Civil Servants and other group of workers. Under the scheme, houses will be built at affordable cost to interested applicants by private estate developers who apply for partnership with the Office of the Head of Civil Service of the Federation, of which my firm is one.
Let us not replace standard with affordability. What measures are there to check standards since these houses will also be affordable?
The Federal Government Staff Housing Loan Board and other relevant agencies have been directed to ensure that houses being delivered by the private developers are of standard quality. That is why the directive from the Head of Service said that public servant wishing to take advantage of this initiative to own their personal homes are encouraged to approach the property developers to obtain letters of provisional offer for the purpose of obtaining mortgage loans from recognized mortgage institutions and agencies. So I can assure that the houses will be of standard quality and especially the ones developed by our firm.
You have been in the fore front of campaign for provision of housing for civil servants, and recently, the Federal Government appointed your firm, Rotech Estate Emprise Limited to provide affordable housing for civil servants, how do you intend to handle this?
Let me use this opportunity to thank the office of the Head of the Civil Services of the Federation for the recognition accorded my firm. I think I will attribute this gesture to the status of my organisation. We deal with quality product and material which I think are fulcrum of any durable building. We are not in this business to compromise quality. We can be accessed based on our services. We have aste and standard which always attract us to the numerous clients. On this particular partnership with the Federal government for affordable houses for civil servants, we already have on ground 200 units of competed three bedroom bungalows reader for off- takers.
These properties are to be accessed through Federal Government Staff Housing Board or through Trust Bond Mortgage Bank. The most important thing here is that, unlike other estate developers who have no structure on ground or struggling to access land for purpose of developing, we have already built houses for allocation.
You said your firm will give priority to the issue of provision of houses for civil servants. What is the motivation behind this?
In the recent past, most civil servants who have laid down their lives in service to the nation have no house of the own after leaving the service. It is based on this that the Federal Government initiated this noble idea and being that my firm is one of the estate firms saddled with this responsibilities of providing affordable housing to civil servants in Abuja, I hope to use opportunity to fulfill something that bordered me all my life.
As a renowned estate developer, what is your take on the recent issues surrounding housing sector in the country, particularly on housing collapse?
The issue of building collapse in this country is very worrisome and at alarming stage. Like I have said at many fora both at the international and local level here, it is a very pathetic situation.
Hardly does a week pass by without the media being awash with stories of fresh building collapses. More pathetic is the fact that besides the huge losses that collapsed buildings create, human lives are lost in the collapsed buildings as well in most cases. From major disasters in which many lives went with collapsed buildings to minor disasters in which people got injuries and even disasters in which no lives were lost or injured, one cannot begin to mention a list of collapsed buildings that have occurred this year alone as one would definitely lose count. Having put so many years in the building profession, the primary cause of building collapse has to do with poor design. This includes the usage of inadequate structural materials for a building design, whereby the load of the building becomes greater than what the structural members of the building are designed to carry or withstand.
In simple terms, if you want to avoid collapse of your buildings, employ the services of professional architects with excellent track records. Often times, in a bid to do a fast and cheap project, some builders are in the habit of using substandard materials, without talking cognizance of the serious negative effects that this could have on the buildings. This has to do with use of poor building materials.
It is common knowledge that some building contractors use half of the quantity of bags needed to construct a building. In such circumstance, the building may collapse immediately after construction. After such ugly incident, this same contractor had to use double of the amount budgeted to reconstruct the building. So, I advise professional colleagues to avoid such practice because it will earn you suffering more than you bargained for when such building collapses. You would not want any of your loved ones to be caught in such disaster – collapse of building, neither would you want to be filed a law suit for endangering the lives of others. Foundation challenge also contributed to issue of building collapse. It is common practice that many building owners and developers convert bungalows to storey buildings. These people most times ignore or are unaware of the fact that the foundation used for a bungalow should not be used for a storey building as it was not designed for such excess load.
Do you think the government has done enough to forestall the recurrence of building collapse?
I think the solution to this problem is for the country to commence enforcement of the National Building Code immediately. I was made to understand that the Federal Government validated the revised National Building Code to deal with the perennial problems in the human settlements sector. In 2006, Nigeria came up with the National Building Code to regulate the conduct and operations of professionals and stakeholders in the construction industry. The guideline, passed by the National Assembly was to be reviewed after three years. The document from what we learnt was presented to the Federal Executive Council, for approval, and which also needs to be domesticated by all the 36 states of the federation for effective enforcement. So, I am appealing to the Federal Government to take the enforcement of the code seriously, after which I think the states and the FCT, will ensure its domestication.
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