Lagos — Various governments as well as private developers are constructing state-of-the-art housing estates across the country. The more these houses are built, the more many Nigerians are retiring under bridges for their inability to afford decent accommodation.

Mr. Olumide Akintayo, this sunny morning sat under the Ijora Bridge, a place that has become his home for the past two years. At one corner of the space there are two weather-beaten 'Ghana-must-go' bags apparently containing his personal effects. His wife, Toyin, was busy cooking breakfast of beans and yam at a makeshift kitchen under the bridge. Their three children-a girl and two boys--were playing with their peers within the environment.

Akintayo served the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) as a technician for 20 years. During those years all effort to get a house of his own was in vain as salaries were hardly paid regularly and when due though he lived in one of the staff quarters. On disengaging from the NRC, he relocated his family to Badia area of Ijora, were they got a one-room apartment at the slum. It was not long they moved in that the landlord sold the premises without adequate notice to the tenants.

With no tangible means of livelihood, he could not get another accommodation before the bulldozer from the new owner of the property came to pull the place down. With neither friend nor brother or neighbour to run to, Akintayo headed to the Ijora Bridge. His intention was to stay there for few months, gather himself together, get a job and then look for befitting accommodation.

However, for the past two years he has been living under the bridge with his family without any hope of leaving the place soon. He is now regretting that if the corporation he worked for had put in place an arrangement for staff to own house or paid salaries regularly he would not have been in the present mess.

Akintayo is not alone in such a predicament. Around him are other occupants who might be in similar problem. Across the breath and width of Lagos State and other cities around the country there have been a gradual emergence of a colony of under-the-bridge squatters. Yet around the poor Akintayo and other low and middle class Nigerians, governments and private housing developers are building various exotic housing estates, but all for high-income earners. One of such estates recently commissioned is the Lagos State Millennium Houses in Lekki in which a duplex is going for N17 million. Little or no attempt is made for low and middle class citizens. Even when there was deliberate attempt, they were priced beyond what they can afford.

A United Nations report in 1996 declared metropolitan Lagos a slum. There is still a strong belief that people are too poor to save or to repay housing loans. In the second republic, this led to heavy housing subsidy by allocating a standard plot of land in Lagos at the rate of N1, 000 for high density, N1,500 for medium density and N2, 000 for medium density and the sale of Shehu Shagari core housing at N6, 000.00 and N15, 000.00 respectively for one-bedroom and three-bedroom bungalow- a paternalistic approach that could not be sustained."The fact is that there is no adequate housing policy or adequate implementation of the existing one by various governments for the benefit of the poor masses and the people at the rural areas. Housing programme in this country has never favoured this segment of the society. Corporate organisations are also guilty in this matter for their inability to provide housing accommodation for their staff," Tony Edike, a quantity and estate surveyor told THISDAY.

In a paper titled 'Housing Financing in Nigeria: Need for Re-engineering', Dr. Timothy Olugbenga Nubi of the Department of Estate Management, University of Lagos and the National Coordinator Ideal Habitat Cooperative Housing Initiatives, said it has become glaring that most of the urban population live in dehumanising housing environment, while those that have access to average housing do so at abnormal cost. Nubi, who is also national co-ordinator, Ideal Habitat Co-operative Housing Initiatives, said that rent in major cities of Nigeria is about 60 per cent of an average worker's disposable income.

This is far higher than the 20 to 30 per cent recommended by the United Nations, he noted. He explained that the rate of demand for new houses was in part predicated on the rate of formation of new houses and in part on the rate of replacement of old housing stock. With estimated population of 110 million according to the 1991 census report, he said Nigeria needs to produce 720,000 housing units per annum based on an estimate of nine dwelling units a year per 1,000 of population. This is a very big challenge to the building industry, Nubi added.

According to the Federal Office of Statistics, Lagos, despite Federal Government access to factors of housing production, the country could at best expect 4.2 per cent of the annual requirement from the government in Abuja. Substantial contribution is expected from other public and private sectors, while it is acknowledged that private sector developers account for 83 per cent of urban housing. Unfortunately, the private sector is saddled with numerous problems which make supply always fall far short of demand. Of these, the most limiting is finance.

Nubi explained that finance has been part of housing problems, but he ranked land and building materials higher. The drought of information and working knowledge of housing finance operation is a major problem today, he further stressed.

Housing, he said, is the first area to suffer in a tight money market since neither the builder nor the consumer could readily obtain finance for housing. Actually, many builders have difficulty obtaining capital for their projects even in normal times.

It was to tackle the housing problem that the Federal Government established the National Housing Fund (NPF) to collect funds from the Mandatory Saving Scheme. Again out of the N300 million loan approved by the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria (FGMBN) between 1999 and 2001, only N100 million was advanced. The problem in this case was not availability of fund but stringent measures to prevent default. Hence, the housing problems persisted, the housing expert stressed.

FMBN started operation in 1977 with the following main functions: Provision of long-term credit facilities to mortgage institutions in the country; the encouragement and supervision of the activities of the mortgage institutions.

Others are provision of long- term loan to individuals and property developers for housing, produce saving facility, and carry out research on mortgage finance. These activities have been marred by administrative ineptitude, political instability and unco-ordinated policies.

No doubt, housing is regarded as a social problem. But while it is admitted that housing must be provided or improved eventually, many national economic development programmes regard housing as a form of investment that could be postponed. The longer it can be put off, the reason goes, the better the result for the nation as a whole.

"There are portions of the world in which the satisfaction of demand for housing and housing improvement, is a rewarding private business which does not lack eager participants and which seems to produce, as in the United States, a general level of housing welfare. Nevertheless, in many parts of the world, housing is regarded as a demand, which cannot and should not be satisfied by the market and, hence, must be distributed as a form of public largesse," Nubi further explained.

The perception of housing as either 'economic good' or 'social-good', he added, would determine the "level of investment and government involvement in its production and distribution. When seen as a 'social good', housing market is subjected to political uncertainty and statutory intervention.

"In such a circumstance, private involvement is discouraged as investors will be unwilling to take the risk. Our land policy is an example of such restraint. The 1996 Rent Control Edict in Lagos was a discriminatory one. The rent control law was limited to low-income housing. This discrimination led to investment in high income housing as shown in Lagos, Abuja amongst other places", he emphasised.

In 1979 the World Bank intervened to assist the country. This led to housing projects in eight states of Nigeria with Bauchi State having a share of N 24.6 million and Imo State, N63.8 million. The 1980 - 1985 Fourth National Development Programme also proposed a budget of N1.9 billion for housing. During this period N600m was spent on housing construction. The failure of these housing programmes and the ever-increasing housing needs led to the promulgation of National Housing Policy of 1990.

Edike told THISDAY that it was to encourage workers to save towards building their houses that the former National Providence Fund (NPF) was established to collect funds from employers and employees towards their retirement. This gives them access to long-term funds and put them in good position to finance housing development. NPF collects funds from employers especially government (organisations and large business concerns) and employees and therefore have long-term obligation since employers can only receive their benefits or retirement gratuities only after leaving their jobs.

Thus, NPF usually looks for investment that offer long-term prospects and are inflation proof like real property development or acquisition. They also offered loans on long-term basis to building societies and mortgage institutions.

However, according to Edike, corporate bodies have a lot of role to play in the housing policy by making sure that their staff are not only accommodated while on active service but even when they are retired. He added that by 1979, it had become evident that despite the fact that most companies make huge profit, there was total neglect of the need to solve the obvious housing problems of their workers. This compelled the promulgation of Employees Housing Scheme (Special provision) Decree 54 of 1979.

The main provision of the decree was that any employer of up to 500 employees should provide minimum of 50 housing units out of which three-quarters should be made available for non-executive staff. The decree put in place a structure for identification of such category of employees and implementation of the decree. It also provided for the establishment of a Housing Loan Board by the government. Like policy in Nigeria meant for the lower and middle class, it never worked or lasted.

The high cost of houses in the country may not be unrelated to the cost of building materials, but Nubi explained that where per unit cost is abnormally high "as we have today, the simple implication is that few people will be able to afford it. The limited finance will not be able to spread around the potential home owners".

He added that the gap between income and shelter cost in Nigeria is very wide, and has eliminated the low-income earners from the housing market.

"High cost had been attributed to the following: rising cost of building materials, inflation rate in the economy, high space and quality standard adopted by designers, fees of professional involved in housing designs and construction, excessive profit of contractors and 10 per cent interest payable to NHF.

"The sale of two-bedroom bungalows at Otedola Estate in Lagos, which, according to the former Military Governor of Lagos State, Col. Buba Marwa in 1999 was the cheapest anywhere and the subsequent sale of two- bedroom flat at Ikorodu by LSDPC at N1.7 million, is a bad omen", he stressed.

As Nubi stated, without adequate will to implement previous policies to provide cheaper houses for the poor, no change will be achieved, unless existing structures were re-engineered as appropriate and an enabling environment provided without further delay.