Simmering discontent over Abuja houses

Home takers/seekers in Abuja tell sad tales. A resident who has taken a three-bedroom flat in Sun City Estate said, “The walls aren’t only peeling, they’re cracking. My bedroom leaks badly. The toilets and sinks get clogged often.” The house in question is only three years old. This is not limited to houses built by […]

Home takers/seekers in Abuja tell sad tales. A resident who has taken a three-bedroom flat in Sun City Estate said, “The walls aren’t only peeling, they’re cracking. My bedroom leaks badly. The toilets and sinks get clogged often.” The house in question is only three years old.
This is not limited to houses built by private firms. A woman who lives in a house built by government is not any better in her experience: “I live in the Federal Housing Estate Kubwa. I bought the house when government was selling its houses under owner-occupier in 2004 during Obasanjo administration. My house’s walls have cracked. Whenever there’s a vibration, the walls drop particles. I pray everyday these walls don’t fall on me and my children. There’s poor finishing. Plumbing works are bad.”
A homeseeker, Joe Shima lamented: “One of the houses I checked out belongs to a former police IG. The rooms looked like shacks but had a princely sum attached. One thing that strikes me though, is when you go to these poorly constructed houses you see some of the classiest cars around…The property I saw in

Gwarinpa this evening has the staircase terminating just at the door meant to be the entrance to my sitting room.” Many who live in Gwarinpa Housing Estate either bring down their structures and reconstruct them of keep doing patch works. Gwarinpa houses were built by the Federal Housing Authority (FHA).

Building with scant regard for uptakers
Apparently, many developers in Abuja are only for profiteering. A house may look fantastic but when observed inside, the finishing is done with the least of materials in the market. As a result, many houses show problems not long after being occupied. Investigations showed that houses are sold for as much N10 million (two-bedroom flat) and N15 million (three-bedroom bungalow). But these are houses experts say can be built for as low as N4/5 million.
In some of these houses, once the bed is positioned in the bedroom, hardly is there space left for anything else. Two persons cannot conveniently cook in the kitchen. Parking lots can scarcely contain vehicles of occupants not to talk about guests.
Mr Ebiwene Bozimo, Assistant Project Manager at Rainbow Town Development Limited expressed that agents always lead homeseekers to rat holes, disguising as apartments. “The fault is not necessarily the architects because in too many of these inept schemes, an architect was never involved. And it cannot be merely because clients tend not to pay properly for design because there is no difference in payment between ‘good’ designs and ‘bad’.
“A question we must ask ourselves is why developers and builders avoid the services of architects. We are evidently failing to project, in clear terms, the benefits of a properly executed architect-inspired design, even for ‘commercial’ residential design,” he said.
An Abuja-based architect, Mr Al Utsaha aptly captures the situation. “We have very greedy developers and unfortunately inept professionals. There is a huge temptation to compromise standards and it takes sheer guts, and the resolution not to deviate, for professionals not to sacrifice their professionalism on the altar of cheap, easy and petty patronage. Within the last two months, I have had two commissions, or better still, two temptations.
“My client has a plot measuring 2,000sqm and he insisted on having 18 units of two-bedroom apartments. I gave him two options thus: a total of 10 units of ‘regular’ two-bedroom apartments on two floors. Each flat has two parking lots and an additional four lots for visitors or 14 units of two-bedroom terrace duplexes with 24 parking lots — four less than to make each unit to have two lots each.
“As we speak, he has not made up his mind. I expect him, as a businessman to come and insist that we compromise setback, minimum spatial consideration and parking all in a bid to get more units. And I’m waiting to tell him to go to hell, because my liciense is what’s at stake. My reputation not his money!
“Another client in Suleja wants us to reduce the statutory set back from three meters down to one meter so that he can get at least 12 units of one-bedroom on a plot of land, no consideration for parking or cross ventilation.
“Developers have a very sarcastic way of telling off the designer and the feeble minded designers fall for these to the detriment of the final end user. To a very large extent, the buck should stop at the table of the designers, yet you have the development control bodies saddled with the responsibility to certify and approve designs, but most of them are so ill equipped and hardly see beyond their noses! Most of them are not even qualified to practise in the field – more like quacks practising quackery.
“The rot in the country, my friend…affects all sectors of the economy very deeply, regrettably though. Until the regulatory bodies start to dish out punishment to liciensed practitioners who betray their certifications, this rot will definitely and surely take on tap roots.”
Because residents of Abuja keenly struggle to live in the exquisite downtown area, there is always a long queue of those who cough up money in the name of rent or purchase of these badly developed property. Developers, therefore, have little consideration for the convenience of tenants. While many condemn developers for their substandard jobs, some put the blame on the Abuja Metropolitan Management Council (AMMC) which Development Control Department fails to put check on unwholesome acts of property financiers.
The problem actually starts from land acquisition. One, Abuja land is too expensive. Developers argue that when much money is expended only to buy a piece of land, it becomes extremely difficult to get good returns on property. The president of the Nigerian Institute of Quantity Surveyors (NQIS) Murtala Aliyu recently analysed the situation thus: “You pay N120 million for a piece of land and you put another N70 million and then somebody comes to pick up the house for N350 million – if you take it economically and you’re supposed to harmonise that – let’s say 40 years, apart from activities that will take place to keep it fit for 40 years, there’s no way you can recover N350 million in 40 years. These are some of the challenges that make the property market a bit difficult. Genuine investors in property don’t have the motivation to really invest.”
Our enquiries equally pointed to the tardy process of getting approvals for land development from the Development Control Department as another problem. The process is not only slow, quite often, documents disappear. It is said that to avoid this loss of files, developers need to “settle” so their applications are not only guarded but also speedily treated.
Then there is the big problem of management of infrastructure around Abuja property. New estates are springing up without even access roads to them. Engineering works don’t exist. Many developers therefore indulge in all manner of tricks while building because investors must get returns on their investments.

Dilapidated bungalows
An Abuja-based estate developer, Mr Chinedum Iheke of COI Logistics Ltd observed that the dilapidation is mostly in bungalows because government looks more at buildings with suspended floors. He said those building bungalows quite often don’t engage engineers. For a DPC of a three-bedroom flat, they can use 20 bags of cement, he noted, adding that the cost of sub-letting jobs is always not calculated and there are no terms for sub letting jobs. According to him, many houses built five years  ago now have problems because there were few developers in town and regulation was not quite serious.
He said, “They [developers] cut cost in a lot of things. No engineering evaluation into the job and the builder wants to maximize gain – they don’t follow due process. These are people who don’t have conscience. This thing is like a time bomb. A developer who leaves improperly developed property for the uptaker should be sued.”
He called for establishment of strong management team “because a building can be well designed but in actual execution, the plan isn’t followed.” He asked, “How can you be doing 100 housing units with only one engineer on site?” He advised regulators to ensure that anyone building up to 50 housing units owns a construction company and that buildings should have construction standard bills. He wants regulation of all those involved in the construction industry – not the engineers alone.
The Public Relations Officer (PRO) of the Development Control Department, Mr Kalu Emetu reacted saying buildings that fall short of standards were not approved. “We insist, get approval before commencing development. There’s also a division that monitors development. We emphasise on parking space because if you build without a parking space, motorists will block the way. We have experts who specify dimensions of houses that are comfortable. When we enforce the law, the public looks at us as being wicked.”
According to Emetu, the department encourages developers to always come directly for their documents – not to rely on middlemen who quite often do not tell them actual reasons their approvals are withheld or delayed.

Reverse this ugly trend
Managing Director at Interstate Architects Ltd.Mr Olusegun Ladega amplifies the very popular saying about Nigeria that “the problem isn’t the lack of laws or regulation but the lack of enforcement”. He said, “From my recollection of planning and development control laws and regulations, buildings must be certified fit before they can be occupied by anyone and failure to obtain a certificate of fitness is supposed to be an offence.”
He thus suggested: Local governments must be rejuvenated such that they have well established unit/departments that carry out routine inspection of all tenements within their jurisdiction; Letting agents must require that their clients obtain certificates of fitness before their property can be put in the market (this is standard practice in a number of countries); Planning regulations must be flexible enough to permit high quality compact developments in the so-called high class locations especially downtown locations; and Nigerians need to be enlightened to the fact that there is more to architecture than whimsical facades.