THE IMMORALITY OF THE PLAYERS IN NIGERIA’S HOUSING SECTOR

“The righteous considereth the cause of the poor: but the wicked regardeth not to know it.”
(Proverbs 29:7)

In this article I wish to present us with how the actions of the players in Nigeria’s housing sector are the undoing of the sector. One major issue with the nation of Nigeria today is housing and all players have a role in making the sector sick, particularly the Estate Surveyors who are about the most influential  both in terms of training, practice, resources, and influence. They play a significant role and their actions are able to either make the industry or destroy it.

Before we review players in Nigeria’s housing sector, we need to look at the industry first and say how well is the industry doing? We must remind ourselves that housing is not a luxury but a necessity. How many people can live in a decent home earning the average salary of the workforce? From various statistics available online I roughly estimate the average salary of the Nigerian work force to be about N40k to N100k, but some can earn even less. We must also know that this is for salary earners whereas there are many unemployed, hustlers, and what have you who don’t make anywhere close to these. Seeing that housing is a necessity and not a luxury, we can’t even work with the average but with the minimum wage of N30k. How many people earning N30k can afford a decent house to live in? It is obvious that that is impossible in most parts of Nigeria of today. Most people that earn a salary of this range live at the expense and mercy of others. On this basis the industry is oppressingly bad.

Considering these facts and remembering that shelter is not a luxury but a necessity, we can easily see that the industry is obviously sick and oppressive. From a casual glance all the players in the industry are doing poorly. People earning an average of about a hundred thousand are paying house rent as high as eight hundred thousand. Vicinities of petty traders and low earning labourers are having houses as high as four hundred thousand. I’ve seen people running from pillar to post seeking how to raise enough money to pay up their house rent, borrow from where they’re not supposed to borrow and by this means are forced into making financial blunders that sometimes they’ll need the assistance of a community or church contributions to come out of. The life of the tenant has been most pitiful.

So let’s look at the role the major players in this sector of our economy are playing that makes the sector to be in such a bad shape.

The Wickedness Of Our Lords And Ladies

“By reason of the multitude of oppressions they make the oppressed to cry: they cry out by reason of the arm of the mighty.”
(Job 35:9)

We often forget who they are because their titles have been given a humble meaning. When you hear a landlord or a landlady, the thing that comes to mind is that man that would number all the mangos on his tree with a marker so that his tenants won’t take any without his noticing it, or that lady whose car will never start. For this reason landlord or landlady has taken a meaning that is near ridiculous. But I guess if we just take off “land” from their titles it would give us a better understanding of who they are. They are lords and ladies. You know what that means right? They’re masters possessing authority.

Our lords and ladies have been one of the major players in making an oppressed city. First let’s talk of how land lords review rents. They just form a consensus within themselves and shoot their prices up and they become bold in shooting prices up because of the high demand for shelter (seeing it is a necessity) and because they are confident that since they all are agreed not to rent their houses for anything less than the exorbitant prices they have fixed, the helpless tenant is forced to pay through his nose to satisfy the evil cravings of his lord. And because most times when people search for shelter it is often in a hurry or time bound, they know it won’t be long before their prey bend the knee to their oppressive demands.

I who write this thing have been a victim of such practices. As I write these lines, just a week ago I renewed my rent at a rate that is more than double what I paid last year. I sought to negotiate but not even a kobo was removed from it. They were so adamant. When I say they, I mean the house owner, the agent, and advisers who came to meet me once in my house as a group. Seeing they didn’t make any compromise I requested that they let me pay it in installments for three months. I got a threatening response on a Thursday that I must pay up the full amount before the week runs out to avoid embarrassment. I weighed the level of wickedness playing out here. Someone is finding it hard to pay up rent in three months and you give him an ultimatum of three days threatening him with embarrassment.

I laughed at the folly of such a threat because by the laws of the land I could live in that house for more than the three months for free before leaving for another place. However, because I was advised otherwise by a senior friend and because I had the intention of living beyond the time the law could afford me I decided to pay the full price at once. I also knew that it’s not my house and for this reason I could be driven out before my desired time if issues arose. The usual tactics land lords and ladies use is to lie that they want to live in the house themselves and so ask you to leave. When you live they’ll look for another tenant to occupy the house in your stead. So base have people become that lying means nothing to them so much as it becoming an integral part of common tactics in certain trades.

Not that I didn’t have the money, but I’m a business person. You should never let your bank account run so low as to threaten your productivity. What happens if one of my devices develops a fault that requires a lot of money? The money you have in your account is a form of self insurance. But I was forced to drain it to near red to satiate the cravings of my lord or lady. When you are forced into taking unwise and potentially injurious decisions by those who have the power to make you do it, what else is that than oppression?

The increment in house rents is a general increment. The lamentations of tenants on the outrageous increase in house rents has even gotten to various newspaper outlets. When I was in court about the time of writing these things, I saw a tenant bringing his lord to court and the dispute was about the increment of house rent also. The lord in question doubled the tenant’s rent and that’s why they’re in court. Not this alone, all my friends that I discussed the issue of house rent with, all, except one, told me that it is the same thing they’re experiencing that their house rents were drastically increased. May God bless the lady of that one because he told me how she has never increased his rent since he started living in her house and he has been there for many many years. He also said many other good things she does for the comfort of her tenants at her own expense.

The drastic increase in cost of living of recent has really revealed to us the level of evilness and barbarism of the men and women in our nation. To the average Nigerian all other person exist to be eaten as bread. Their well being and comfort has absolutely no value in our eyes. Because there’s the excuse of high dollar rates and cost of fuel, everyone is taking advantage of the narrative to shoot the prices of things up not knowing that we are only harming ourselves in so doing. I explained this in detail in my article, “THE CRIMINALITY OF UNIONISM IN NIGERIA AND THE DISSERVICE THEREOF” so I won’t delve into that here. At such a time where it’s so hard for people to cope, our lords and ladies also joined in the oppression of shooting the prices of rents up. Even doubling it.

When I was informed that my house rent was going to be reviewed and that it will be more than double, I had a chat with my agent and he said the reason the house owner has chosen to shoot up the price by more than twice of what I paid last year was because of the increase in cost of living. He said that house rents are supposed to be reviewed according to the current realities. I wondered how the increase in cost of living should be the reason for such a drastic increase in rent. I’d have understood a bit if he had told me that the house rent increased because there is a general increase in salary for everyone including business people. That would have been reasonable and even in line with the logic of a good advice I once got that house rent not being more than your three months’ salary. Rents of houses therefore are reviewed according to the present realities of what lords and ladies crave not according to the financial capacity of the masses. But when we have people increasing house rent because of the increase in cost of living, not caring that times are hard for everyone, it shows that we have lost our sensitivity and our humanity.

House rents can’t be reviewed like prices of tomatoes and beans. The house they’re thoughtlessly reviewing the rents for may have been built when a bag of cement was N500 and now they wish to review it as though the increment in the cost of living means they have to rebuild the house again. The only thing they can say is that they too have to buy these things whose prices have gone up so they need more money from rents. But house rents cannot be a primary source of sustenance, not even if you have a whole estate as yours. Rents from properties are for passive income. Anyone that wants to use house rents as a primary source of sustenance is not wise and being unwise can’t fail to be wicked. House rent can’t be a primary source of sustenance so much that if the cost of fufu goes up your tenants will pay for it. If the cost of egg roll goes up, your tenants will pay for it. If that’s the case, what you have kept in your house is not a tenant but a cow. A cow to milk for your sustenance. But why should humans be treated like cows? Even if you wanted cows for tenants, at least build ranches, not human houses for them. That way humans will not be tricked into renting them.

If people wish to have a business to yield good returns that they can justly shoot up as they wish (of which there is scarcely any) they should not go into something as essential as shelter. I know how people who like to make unfair gains are so attracted to the essential aspects of life such as shelter, food, transportation, etc., because here they can force people to pay anything their greed craves. Rendering service in these sectors and making profit thereby is good, but to do it without consideration for the consumer or end user would easily become oppression, and that is wickedness. Let anyone who’s greedy for gain, in a haste to make money, or lazy to work leave these sectors and focus rather on luxury goods.

So the first reason for our lords and ladies to increase their house rents is to increase the cost of living which is illogical and insensitive. The second is they say everyone else is increasing their rents, so I must do the same. That is one of the most absurd ways of reasoning I’ve found to be so common today. So if everyone is going mad, it becomes bad to be sane. Third they say demand for houses is on the increase, but probably this they erroneously say because they mistake inquiries for demands. Inquiries for house rents must of necessity increase when all lords and ladies are increasing their rents. So an increase in inquiries about houses reflects dissatisfaction, not an increase in demand.

There are just too many absurdities that characterise the judgment of our lords and ladies. The effect of this is that they tyrannise and oppress tenants. “Woe to her that is filthy and polluted, to the oppressing city!” (Zephaniah 3:1). Destruction awaits that city that oppresses its inhabitants. In the wickedness of our lords and ladies they have failed to consider the cause of the poor. If the prices of things have gone up and the poor in particular are finding it hard to cope, to drastically increase the cost of their shelter is to wickedly disregard the cause of the poor. It is written, “The righteous considereth the cause of the poor: but the wicked regardeth not to know it.” (Proverbs 29:7).

The Need of Estate Surveyors

“Do ye indeed speak righteousness, O congregation? do ye judge uprightly, O ye sons of men?”
(Psalm 58:1)

“Open thy mouth, judge righteously, and plead the cause of the poor and needy.”
(Proverbs 31:9)

It is in such circumstances where lack of judgment and uncontrolled appetite is resulting in oppression that estate surveyors ought to step in, for they are professionals in determining by fair standards of giving value to properties and ensure right practices and fairness, because in professional training of any field, fairness, right standards, and best practices should also be taught, else it is no profession. But contrary to what we are to expect from our professionals, they even worsen the situation. Where even our lords and ladies are willing to give their houses at reasonable rates, the surveyors, serving as agents, would shoot the price up just because that would give them more money coming as agency fees. A casual look at the role surveyors play seems to inform the lay man that all he learns in his years of training is the art of shooting the cost of properties beyond all bounds of reason and without principles. The art of opportunism and blowing of grammar. What a profession!

In their practice of shooting prices up we see many houses empty for so long meaning people are not able to pay for the houses at the rates they set for it. In fact they’re the real problems of owners of real estate. Even in cases where the lords and ladies are content to rent their properties out at an affordable rate, the agents whet their appetites for greed, and if that doesn’t work they simply lose interest. For this reason prospective tenants often find better accommodation at better rates if they can take their time to find the lords and ladies directly. Some even craft dubious ways of renting houses out at exorbitant prices the owners of the houses never approved of and do it without their knowledge, keeping the excess to themselves. So the problem is not even with our lords and ladies as much as it is with the surveyors who act as agents.

While the evils of estate surveyors may look little morally, it is a great evil. The Lord says, “A false balance is abomination to the LORD: but a just weight is his delight.” (Proverbs 11:1). When you overvalue properties for gain you establish a false balance and this is an abomination to the Lord.

The Responsibilities of Estate Surveyors

“Open thy mouth, judge righteously, and plead the cause of the poor and needy.”
(Proverbs 31:9)

I believe that estate surveyors and their corporate body are extremely influential, but they’re unfortunately using it to wring out all the money from the poor masses and are ensuring that no one has anywhere to run in getting themselves affordable shelter. To them this is success. I hope they repent. However, if they were to carry out their roles properly what shall they do?

I believe with the influence the estate surveyors wield they ought to be at the forefront of ensuring that building materials are affordable because that is the first step to ensuring cost of housing gets reduced. I’ve been at a program designed to address the issue of affordable housing, and when talking on an affordable housing project, they said they had to invite the top companies involved in building materials to get the materials at cheaper prices which then enabled them to build really affordable and functional houses for low income earners. If individual companies could do so successfully, estate surveyors have such influence, if not more, to take measures to bring down the cost of building materials especially now that we hear stories that building materials produced in Nigeria can sell up to four times less in neighbouring countries than what they cost here at home. Such anomalies ought to be checked by people and associations of influence. But so far we haven’t seen their involvement in these areas. This is because they relish in the fact that whether people like it or not they must pay for shelter. So who cares at what prices building materials are sold?

We’ve heard cases where sellers of building materials claimed that smuggling is the reason for increasing the cost of building materials. That’s just really ludicrous. I am a business person too. The thing that plagues my type of business and similar to smuggling is piracy. When piracy is rife so much that you have to compete with pirated products you have two options, give up the fight and stop business, or sell at a price cheaper than that of the pirated goods which is a hard thing to do. Smuggling ought to even crash prices and not make the prices go up. If smuggled goods are in the market, they can’t be at a price higher than the legitimate goods or else no one will buy them. If smuggled goods are in the market at cheaper prices, then is it not silly to say that’s why you increase the price of your own goods?

So it is evident that there is no reason for which the increment is to be based and that they just want to exploit the common man and possibly create hardship to turn the masses against the government. Such exploitation of the masses ought to be challenged by the estate surveyors for herein, that is in the affordability of building materials and building cost, can the business of housing be more profitable for those engaged therein without compromising the interest of tenants or home buyers. House owners will get their returns on investment much faster when it costs them less to build their houses. And seeing the materials are cheaper they can do this without oppressing the poor. But if the prices of these things are on the high side, then must the poor suffer it.

They mustn’t keep their mouths closed saying, “who cares? I am making my profit and people must have a place for their heads.” To all those who find themselves in a position of power or influence, the admonition to heed is, “Open thy mouth, judge righteously, and plead the cause of the poor and needy.” (Proverbs 31:9).

The things mentioned here are just few compared to the many ways estate surveyors can plead the cause of the poor and make profit decently and morally. If they look in this line they shall see far more. I hope that the estate surveyors’ body would begin to do more in being useful to the society than just engaging in the immoral practice of overvaluing properties.

Yardstick For Fixing House Rents

“A false balance is abomination to the LORD: but a just weight is his delight.”
(Proverbs 11:1)

From the text above we see that God delights in having standards, right standards, for determining the value of things. And wrong standards in drawing up the value of things he hates. And where there are no standards, particularly for essential things like shelter is one and the same as wrong standards because no standards means our whims and interests form the standards which cannot fail to constitute an outrageously wrong standard. Of course I too would like to draw a straight line on a white paper and be paid a million dollars for it. Everybody wants a little work and great pay. So whims and interests cannot be the standards upon which anything at all runs.

As we have said, to overvalue properties for gain is to establish a false balance and to do abomination. On the other hand a just weight is the Lord’s delight. This informs us that there ought to be proper standards by which the value of properties are drawn, not merely what lords, ladies, and their trained opportunists connive to declare. So let’s look at some that come to mind.

As I grew up into adulthood I was given a piece of advice which I think is good and is a good yardstick to measure if or not a house rent is good or not. The advice says, your house rent should never be more than your 3 months’ salary. Therefore, the person earning a hundred thousand Naira ought not to pay a rent higher than three hundred thousand Naira. And a person earning the current minimum wage of thirty thousand Naira ought not to pay a rent higher than ninety thousand Naira. Anything beyond this is to do injury and disservice to yourself.

And if this be the case, then to draw up house rent for people by location we need to take a proper economic and demographic statistics of places before we draw up the house rent for those places. By this I mean we should try to understand, by surveys and investigations, the age group living in a place and the salary range of jobs located within the same vicinity. By this we can know the type of houses tenants would need and their salary scale. This is the right, fair, and just method in drawing up house rent for tenants. Other things such as special facilities and services also should be put into consideration. Anything short of this is unjust.

If people work elsewhere and still choose to live in cheap places, it is up to them to pay up for their choice in higher cost of transportation. And if they can cut on the cost of transportation by choosing to see their family less, it’s a sacrifice that should be worth its weight in cash.

Why I say this is that there are places where the people living in the immediate vicinity can’t afford houses there, but people working in town live there having to see their families less often because they have to find a place to sleep over in town till they can come home to see their families, say once a week. And it’s not like there are any special features to the houses like standby generators, houses powered by solar during power outage, CCTV, or personnel of the British Royal Marine for security guards. It’s just like most other houses. The people working in that vicinity can’t afford the houses set by owners of the house because businesses there can’t afford to pay much. Such cost of rents is oppressive.

The baseline is that house rents should be fairly commensurate with people’s earnings. If people’s earnings don’t get doubled in a year’s time but rather the purchasing power of their earnings depreciates greatly, it is godless to double the house rents of people under any circumstance.

On bases similar to these is how the yardstick for the cost of house rents should be drawn. What I present may not be adequate but the base line is that houses should not be treated as a luxury and so everyone who is of age should be able to afford it comfortably without harming their finances and well being. More ought to be thought of on establishing fair standards for drawing up the cost of house rents and fine tuning them to meet the baseline lest we draw up unjust yardsticks and provoke God to anger. It should ever be the business of the righteous, the reasonable, and good citizens to use just means to determine prices of things, not just to bamboozle people with technical terms with no meaning and then proceed to shoot prices up.

Suggested Government Intervention

“Open thy mouth for the dumb in the cause of all such as are appointed to destruction. Open thy mouth, judge righteously, and plead the cause of the poor and needy.”
(Proverbs 31:8 – 9)

Where every other party has failed the government ought to step in to protect the common man with laws, policies, projects, and more. Below are ways I feel the government can step in.

Mass Housing Schemes. We have seen things like this but the whole idea is either ill conceived or outrightly dubious. Government builds houses and sells them to individuals willing to buy. But these can not solve housing problems. You see all these housing schemes for low income earners to own a house, but let’s be honest with ourselves, can low income earners purchase houses of any kind? Low income earners want to live in an affordable house, not own a house. Low income earners earn about the minimum wage of N30k per month but the payment plan of many of these housing schemes requires the buyer to pay N50k to N100k per month for a period of about 5 years. N50k per month from someone earning N30k? Even if a husband and wife combine their salary can they subscribe to such a plan? When you charge someone N50k to N100k per month, then must his salary be up to N150k to N200k per head, or more. In the Nigeria of today, are those low income earners?

Speaking from firsthand observation, what happens to all these houses for “low income earners” is that it is still the rich that will buy up the houses only to rent it out to the poor at oppressive prices. In such cases just one person (a supposed low income earner) will come and buy up to 5 units of houses. Is that one too a low income earner? So the idea of building houses for low income earners to sell to buyers is an ill conceived idea.

Furthermore, from my firsthand observation also, building houses for sale to buyers is always far more expensive than when people buy land and build it themselves. In one of these government schemes some people bought into the idea, got mortgages but couldn’t pay up until they retired and used their gratuity to pay up, whereas if they were to have built the houses themselves they wouldn’t have run into such a mess. This is either because it is a scheme for office occupiers to enrich themselves rapidly at the expense of those who don’t want to run the risk of being duped and so prefer to own a house through government housing schemes. It is unfair to target “low income earners” in ways that will make them pay far more than they would have paid without government intervention.

Government therefore should not be in the business of building houses for her citizens to buy. Mass housing should be for rent. All classes of people can rent, have a decent house where functionality and affordability is prioritised to live in with assurance that the house will always be affordable. Remember, shelter is not a luxury but a necessity. Later in life each man can choose to build his own house to his own taste. That is their own personal business, not the government’s. This way citizens of the country rent directly from the government at a very cheap rate and not leave them at the mercy of godless ones of our lords and ladies. This shall be a great way to regulate house rents without having to control the price of house rents itself. This will also be a perpetual source of revenue for the government.

Next, the government should make more laws to shield tenants from oppressive lords and ladies. These laws should entail the intervals at which lords and ladies can review their rents as well as the percentage. I’ve seen cases where someone gets a spacious house rent in an expensive part of town at a relatively affordable rate of about N1m for the first year and the next year he was forced to pay about N2m. Now this is wickedness because when someone moves into a house, he tries to settle down and may not even settle down properly before the year runs out. He gets a school for his children nearby, knows the closest market, finds a church, and all that, then after one year you double his rent so that he’s now forced to pay an amount that is injurious to his well being or what he’s not prepared to pay just because it would be bad for him to relocate without even settling down properly. So lords and ladies use cheap rents to trap people, and in one year place them in a tight corner and begin to extort money from them. Seeing such wickedness abound, it behoves the government to intervene and set laws to prevent such evil. Not just to make laws that tenants can use to restrain their lords and ladies, but one that shall also penalise those who flout these laws. I recommend therefore that rents should be reviewable once every three years with a maximum increment rate of 30%.

When there are alternative houses provided by the government and laws in place, oppression in the housing sector shall drop to near zero level.

Next, rather than building houses to sell to interested individuals, the government should only facilitate the process of interested individuals owning a land and developing what they like. They should tackle fraud in the system because fraud is so rife. As I speak an elderly person I know has a piece of land in Lugbe Area along Rubochi Karimo Road that an estate developer encircled along with a number of other lands and placed security at the gate so that you can’t even have access to your own land if you’re the owner. I went to Development Control and AMAC to make inquiries about the land for her, while in AMAC they affirm that the papers she has are legit, their way of speaking was as though they were doing the bidding of the encroachers and all their suggested ways of resolving the issue were in favour of the encroaching party. When I spoke to few friends about it they told me that such practices were rife. Somebody can fence a large tract of land and place a banner, with phone numbers, address, and all, it means there is no fear whatsoever of the government agencies responsible for monitoring land use. An evidence that they are working in league with government agencies to defraud people and rob them of their lands.

I also submitted a building plan for approval from a government body but the staff there asked me to pay over N300k for the approval whereas on their website what was stated was N52k. In this case the government agencies or their staff are the ones defrauding people directly without any fear of being found or penalised.

It is obvious that the government could do more in protecting people against scammers because if people could do such a thing in broad day light even encircling the lands of multiple people and posting a signboard with their names, address, number, and all, and when you take it to the regulatory bodies you only find out that they’re part of the scammers or in league with them. Such action shows that there is not the slightest fear of the government. In fact such actions should only be where there is a non-existing government. But there is, we are not unconscious of the many goodness we enjoy from the government, but there’s still so much to be desired.

So rather than the government bothering itself about building houses to sell to “low income earners,” it should focus on building mass housing for rent and do more in protecting people from scammers which shall enable people to easily build their own houses to their own taste. In the face of scam and fraud it is the role of the government and her institutions to interpose and shield the weak from the wicked. It is written, “Open thy mouth for the dumb in the cause of all such as are appointed to destruction. Open thy mouth, judge righteously, and plead the cause of the poor and needy.” (Proverbs 31:8 – 9).

You can’t leave key aspects of the economy in the hands of private individuals for the private man is by default an opportunist. Key aspects include housing, transportation, food price (not food itself), etc. For the society to move forward and that poor be not crushed under wheels of oppression, the government needs to interpose in all ways possible and not limited to making laws and taking necessary actions.

It is my hope that each party that has a role or the other to play in the housing sector and ensure that the poor are not oppressed by not just the rich but by every opportunist. May God help us in granting us the will to do right as well as the strength to do the right. Amen.