Babatunde Fashola And His Advice To Nigerian Landlords

GREAT IMO JONATHAN

Someone told me yesterday morning that the Honourable Minister for Power, Works and Housing, has advised Nigerian landlords to work out an arrangement whereby a tenant can sign a tripartite agreement with his employer, the landlord and himself, such that his rent could be deducted at source every month, instead of landlords collecting rent in arrears. He noted that since Nigerians are not getting paid upfront, it doesn’t make sense asking people to pay upfront, especially civil servants. This he acknowledged is one of the issues driving corruption in our society. 

In my opinion, i think he is right. I believe that will be a good idea. But I doubt if these landlords will agree to do so.

But eventually, that is where we are headed. This is global best practice. I witnessed it in our neighbouring country Ghana, in 2012 and I was amazed. Seeing Ghanaian landlords do that made me realize how backward we are and how wicked we are to ourselves.

But I think the solution is to:
1. Capitalize our land. Empower citizens through leasehold.

2.  Develop a robust mortgage finance architecture that will help accelerate home ownerships across the the federation. The more people get into the home ownership column the less the demand and pressures that necessitates these behaviours of landlords.

This attitude of Nigerian landlords is occasioned by high demand for their properties. As soon as we begin to build more houses, suply will begin to balance out demand and things will take shape.

3. We need to work hard to reduce urban migration. There are many unoccupied spaces in hinterlands because there are no viable economic activities that can guarantee livelihoods our communities. This idea of federal government developing only Lagos and Abuja is ridiculous. At least as a minimum, Nigeria should consciously develop 6 economic centres covering the six geopolitical zones of the country. Then states should complement that with senatorial districts economic hubs, while local governments should act as real service centres in reality. The high cost of properties we are experiencing is populations driven. We are witnessing population explosion in our urban cities and there is the need to sort it out.

4. There is still the challenge of child birth. Especially the poor amongst us are giving birth to more children than they can take care of. We need to let our people know that gone are the days when you need to give birth to many children because you don’t know which amongst them would become a messiah. Or because you have to cultivate more farmlands using your children as Labour. That is old thinking and it is no longer relevant in the world we live in today. Today it makes more sense to have one or two children and give them quality life and training. One Yusuf Buhari is better to have as child than all the almajiris in town.

Also note that in those days our parents kept giving birth to children because of high infant mortality rates. They were trying to have backups in case they lose some of the children. This is the reason we should now have leas and take good care of them. With vaccines  everywhere you can immunise your child. And with quality healthcare and good education provided for a child there is less fear of losing him.

5. We need to develop the attitude for delayed gratification as it relates to property business and every other thing as a people. Our people have appetite for quick money, we don’t understand long time investment and delayed gratification. Even our bankers who claim to have corporate ideas are shortsighted and they quick money mongers. Theae are some the thinking that is fuelling crime in our society. A landlord wants rent of upward of two years from a young graduate and you don’t want him to do Yahoo Yahoo or use your daughter for Yahoo plus rituals? How do we expect him to get money when banks are not giving loans and yet the young man is being expected in his village to make money quickly and return to his village to help his family and others? That should not be a justification for crime but they are part of the problem. These are now cultural issues that are affecting our overall national development.

Honestly, we need innovative thinkers in power, especially as governors and legislators.

Great Imo Jonathan writes from Lagos.