There are many housing estates in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), yet many residents lack accommodation. This is because 80 per cent of the houses in these estates are vacant. Not that the residents do not want to rent or occupy them. The housing units rot away in their hundreds while residents, in their thousands, continue to groan under excruciating accommodation issues because they cannot afford the price of the housing units.
When it comes to residential accommodation, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) presents a bundle of contradictions. Tens of sprawling residential housing estates adorns the various emerging districts and landscapes within the city and its environs.
Some of these housing estates, which have been in existence for more than a decade, are being joined by new ones that have been sprouting in different locations year in year out.
However, more than 80 per cent of the houses in these estates are vacant. Some have been vacant since they were completed years ago. And having been exposed to the vagaries of the seasons, a good number of the housing units have witnessed encroachments from the elements.
In some instances, the plaster and paint works on the buildings have been peeling off while weeds have taken over fenced compounds in some of them.
Indeed, the housing units in some of the estates are being put up for sale with no one offering to buy. Usually, the prices are far beyond what the targeted individuals in the middle income stratum can afford. And where the housing estates are targeted for rent, the rate imposed by the owners and their agents are prohibitive.
This has been responsible for varying stages of depreciation in the structures. Sadly, the housing units rot away in their hundreds while residents, in their thousands, continue to groan under excruciating accommodation issues.
The ownership status of these sprawling Abuja estates has become a matter of interest to the various anti-graft agencies. The prolonged vacancy in the facilities is enough to attract attention, given the estimated billions of Naira invested in them.
The Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), recently raised the alarm over some of these estates. According to the ICPC, efforts to trace the owners of a good number of the vacant housing units have met a brick wall. The ICPC said the owners abandon the cluster of housing units the moment the agency initiates investigation into their ownership status.
Chairman of the ICPC, Prof. Bolaji Owasanoye, who was represented by his Chief of Staff, Dr. Esa Onoja, at a recent function in Abuja, said the development has become a great source of worry to the Commission. The ICPC drew a link between illicit financial inflows and the housing estates sprouting up in different parts of the capital city.
The ICPC chief said even in cases where Non-Conviction Asset Forfeiture proceedings are initiated with the buildings attached, nobody comes forward to claim ownership. The agency said it has documented a number of such proceedings involving a good number of such estates, in line with Section 17 of the Advanced Free Fraud Act.
The agency stressed that Sections 37 and 38 of the ICPC Act also empowered the Commission to initiate such proceedings in court where there is suspicion that such assets were proceeds of crime. Owners of many of the houses have abandoned them. And the ICPC Act states that “where nobody comes forward to claim ownership after publication of Temporary Forfeiture Orders from the courts, the assets become the property of the Federal Government”.
The Commission, however, could not immediately provide the number of such Abuja assets so abandoned by their owners.
Consequently, the agency is also relying on members of the public for information that could help trace the owners. Holding brief for the ICPC chairman, Dr. Onoja said: “It’s a big problem that required information from members of the public. We feel that citizens should provide information and after providing information, to act as witnesses. The current administration has a very strong and viable whistle blowing policy.”
Stating that over N.5 trillion has been recovered through the Whistle Blower Policy; the ICPC said the agency and other anti-grant bodies still required more information from members of the public to fight the war.
“A lot more information is required. If we can only get just 25 per cent of what has been stolen and if that money is deployed to education, health, security, I think we would be on the road to joining other countries that our citizens will like to fly to and use their resources”, Onoja said. The ICPC chair said the cost of corruption is borne mainly by the masses and the low income segments of the society, as it’s being witnessed in the accommodation hassles Abuja residents are being made to go through.
He enjoined members of the public to stop seeing corruption as a “victimless” crime, saying that everybody is a victim. “Nigerians should stop seeing corruption as a victimless crime. When funds meant for health, education, security, housing and others are diverted and end up in private hands, we all feel the impact,” he said.
In contrast to the numerous houses lying fallow across the city centre and its outskirts, many residents, particularly those in the low and medium income brackets, are left to find accommodation where the rates are affordable.
Getting decent accommodation within the city is beyond their legitimate earnings. That’s the reason virtually 85 per cent of middle and intermediate level civil servants and their counterparts in the private sector have elected to seek accommodation in the various satellite towns. Some of the preferred satellite towns are Kubwa, Gwagwalada, Kwali, Abaji, Lugbe, Nyanya, Kado and others.
The distance between these settlements and the main city where the workers report for work, ranges from 20 to 70 kilometres. They commute the distance daily, either in their private cars or by public transport.
The adjoining Gwarimpa Estate is not for low income earners. Consequently, high demand for accommodation in the satellite towns has forced property owners in those areas to keep increasing rents on a yearly basis.
These Shylock property owners have succeeded in creating another category of residential accommodation seekers. This category is mainly made up of artisans, labourers, job seekers and their ilk.
They populate the various slums located on the outskirts of the city and the satellite towns. In Abuja, there are two categories of slum dwellers; those living in the periphery of the city and others living in the periphery of the satellite towns.
Those dwelling in the periphery of the city are the most endangered. They easily fall victim to the greed of elite, particularly the political class. In many instances, slum dwellers around the city centre have predators in political office holders or the military establishment.
On many occasions, they are forcefully evicted, their dwelling shanties demolished and the land taken over by the rich and powerful. The slum dwellers are forced to seek accommodation elsewhere, usually in more remote locations far away from the avaricious eyes of their “predators”. And in a jiffy, magnificent structures would start sprouting from the forcefully acquired lands, swelling the number of completed but unoccupied clusters of buildings dotting the landscape. Cases of this might-over-right action are commonplace in the capital city, particularly along the ever busy Nnamdi Azikiwe Airport Road.
Obviously worried by the accommodation plight of millions of underprivileged Nigerians, the United Nations (UN) recently warned the Nigerian government to put an end to forced eviction of its poor and vulnerable segments of the population.
Speaking through its Special Rapporteur, Ms. Leilani Farha, who had just concluded a 10-day housing assessment visit to Nigeria, the UN deplored the ugly trend where highly placed and influential Nigerians are forcibly ejecting poor citizens from their homes and taking over their lands.
Farha noted that these forceful evictions have given rise to informal settlements (slums) ballooning across the country. She described living condition in these informal settlements as inhumane.
Farha stated in her report: “Successive governments have allowed economic inequality in Nigeria to reach extreme levels, a fact that is clearly evident in the housing sector.
Meanwhile, newly built luxury dwellings are sprouting up throughout cities–made possible often through the forced eviction of poor communities”.
The UN Rapporteur noted, sadly, that “these new dwellings do not fulfill any housing need, since many remained vacant, acting as vessels for money laundering or investment”.
Farha also noted in her report, that seven in 10 Nigerians in towns and cities now live in informal settlements, adding that most of these settlements remain without access to running water and toilets. Above all, she noted that these poor and vulnerable citizens live in perpetual fear of being turned out of their homes by the high and mighty.
Worried by the viciousness of the forced evictions and the steady rise in unoccupied buildings within and around the capital city, some stakeholders have called on the authorities to start taxing owners of the vacant buildings.
The taxes, the stakeholders argued, should be as high as levies paid on luxury items. This, they believe, will force down the prices of the housing units and also bring down rents as the case may be. The measures may also check the insatiable appetite of the rich and powerful to despoil the poor and vulnerable by grabbing and sharing their lands.
Source: thenationonlineng
