Daily Independent (Lagos)
Bamidele Ogunwusi
13 October 2008
The ban on the activities of sand dredgers in Lagos has continued to send shivers down the spine of developers in the state as they now face the challenge of sustaining their projects as prices of sand has gone up by over 100 per cent in the past few weeks.
Mr. Sola Adekunle, the Managing Director of Elleon Properties, said the decision of the Lagos State Government to ban sand dredging would do more harm than good to the construction industry as this will slow down the spate of work currently going on in the state and other neighbouring states.
He was of the opinion that the activities of sand dredgers needed to be monitored but done in a way that would not have an adverse effect on the construction industry.
Another developer, Mr. Idowu Akomolafe, the Managing Director of Honey Homes, said the development had led to loss of jobs on construction sites as he had laid off some of his casual workers due to the inadequate supply of sand.
His words: "We cannot continue to operate without sand and as a result I have told my builder to reduce the number of workers at the site to prevent spending too much on workers wages who are coming to work without anything to do because we have shortage in the supply of sand."
In his own reaction, Chucks Nwachuckwu, whose firm, Homes Edge, is working on a 45-unit housing estate in Ikorodu, said he was surprised that the Lagos State Government that is seen as the leading motivator of private sector involvement in housing delivery is the same government that has imposed a ban on sand dredging without thinking of the effects on the industry.
Managing Director, Megamound Investment Limited, Mr. Olumide Osunsina, described the decision by government to ban the activities of dredgers in the state as unfair.
According to him, the ban could be described as hasty; adding that even with the activities of the dredgers, there was still a short fall in the supply of sand to developers in the Lekki axis where his company is doing most of its development.
Osunsina said that before the state government placed the ban, only two companies were involved in large scale dredging of sand in the whole of the state.
He listed these firms to include Messrs Julius Berger (Nigeria)Plc and Westminster, saying that they were not even producing enough sand to meet the demands of the developers in Lekki and its environ.
The Megamound helmsman decried a situation whereby developers in the Lekki corridor were now groaning under the acute shortage of sand due to the ban.
According to him, a 20-ton tipper of sand cost about N65, 000 and is still rising, adding that the tipper could only make one trip due to the distance between Lekki and Ikorodu where they now get the supply of sand from.
These developers then appealed to Governor Babatunde Fashola to take a second look at the ban and lift it. They added that this would go a long way in ameliorating the suffering of developers.
Aside the shortage of sand, Daily Independent also learnt that developers are also having problem in the supply of gravel as some dealers have resorted to hiking the price of the building material.
The reason, it was gathered, was that quarry companies who supply gravel to dealers in Lagos are complaining that the costs of production and that of transporting the material from their sites in Ibadan were becoming unbearable to them and were left with no other choice but to increase the price of the material.
A staff of a quarry company, Mr. Solomon Aderibigbe, said his company, which is currently handling a road project in the South West, is tinkering with the idea of increasing the price of its gravel due to the twin problem of high production cost and transportation.
He attributed the problem to the high cost of diesel, which he said is central to the production of the gravel and transportation to places like Lagos, Abeokuta and other places in the South West.
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