The COVID 19: Rethinking Lagos Housing Schemes By Uchenna Eze & Osita Enwe

Background:

Residential accommodation problem remains acute particularly in Lagos, Abuja and Port-Harcourt (Okafor Obiefuna A. PhD on Shelter for all: An Appraisal of Implementation of the National Housing Policy). Okafor O. A in a clinching arguing states that there is no area of social services where the urban employees needed relief, more desperately than in housing, because of its profound impact on health, welfare and productivity of the individual. – This assertion is more cogent and relevant in view of Governments’ social distancing efforts to contain the spread of COVID 19 especially in Nigeria’s bedsit (face-me-i-face-you) neighbourhoods, which is popular within Lagos State.

The actual human population of Lagos State is debatable with figures ranging between 15 – 26 million depending on whose statistics is relied upon for contextual analysis. According to Leilani Farha, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Housing, “more than two-thirds of Lagos residents live in slums that are among the least hospitable on earth”. Meanwhile TheGuardian report as at 11a.m on 05:04:2020 that there are 224 confirmed cases of COVID19 in Nigeria – over 114 are within Lagos State, 24 patients were discharged with 2 deaths.

Motunrayo Famuyiwa-Alaka, CEO of Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism in her article on Coronavirus: Self-isolation and social distancing ‘in face-me-I-face you’ apartments graphically represented the situation of Lagos residents in bedsit (face-me-i-face-you) apartments when she stated that “across the road from my estate, there was an Iponri settlement where up to 15 persons lived in single rooms and about 10 families shared the conveniences in tenement houses popularly known as ‘face-me-i-face-you’ in Nigeria. This was and still is the case in Lagos, Africa’s most populous city”.

Life in Lagos’ bedsit (face-me-i-face-you) apartments:

No doubt the poor and medium income earners will be worst hit if COVID 19 spreads among these classes of Lagos residents and, Governments know better – we commend its efforts to contain spread of COVID 19 while hoping that its projection of over 25,000 patients (worst case basis) will not be attained or exceeded.

No doubt the poor and medium income earners will be worst hit if COVID 19 spreads among these classes of Lagos residents. Whilst we commend government’s efforts to contain the spread of COVID 19, we hope and pray that its projection of 25,000 patients (worst case basis) will not be attained or exceeded.

LAGOS NIGERIA REAL ESTATE DICTIONARY defines face-me-i-face-you apartments as a colloquial term for single room apartment in Lagos usually built in two rows with a hallway between (both rows) that lead to the rear of the house where common amenities such as toilet, kitchen, clothe lines and bathroom are sited. – Rooms on either row adjoin each other, hence the term, “face-me-i-face-you”.

Communal relationship inherent in bedsit (face-me-i-face-you) apartments in Lagos as well as the nearly unsanitary conditions of its common areas highlight its capacity as a media culture or culture medium for coronavirus. Occupiers of Lagos bedsit (face-me-i-face-you) apartments usually share centralized front and rear entrance or exit, clothe lines, water taps, play area for Children (usually the long passageway or landing or balcony or floor area) or leisure sports for adults, kitchen and kitchenware, toilets, bathrooms, electrical fixtures or light fittings, and in rare circumstance parking lots – these facilities are nearly overcrowded and overused. Water or electricity supply and other basic amenities are also in short supply leading to frequent use of its common areas.

It will be extremely difficult for Occupiers of bedsit (face-me-i-face-you) apartments to effectively comply with Governments’ social distancing, regular deep cleaning of common areas due to the usually large number of occupants. In these apartments, the saying that it takes a community to raise a child is made manifest in their communal living which encourage common disciplining of children and wards, that include spanking a child across his/her face, and pulling a child’s nose or lips – veritable ways of transmitting COVID 19! Government of Lagos State should sensitize these Occupiers more and prohibit these cultural manners of disciplining children in its do not’s of COVID 19 campaigns.

Should Government of Lagos State’s efforts to contain the spread of COVID 19 fail, it will suffer gravest crisis implementing social distancing and regular deep cleaning in its bedsit (face-me-i-face-you) neighbourhoods which exist across all older residential neighbourhoods within Lagos State.

Generally, occupants of bedsit (face-me-i-face-you) apartments are incapable of self-isolation because of the cramped nature of their apartments especially for those occupants who are married. Lagos Government together with cooperate organizations within the State may have to develop and mark out more Isolation Centre in a pro-active manner as it prepares for the worst case. These may include remodeling hotels and guest houses as Isolation Centre in the interim and convert public schools to Isolation Centre on the long haul.

Lagos residents should be encouraged to take advantage of the Governments’ restriction on movement and economic activities to avoid contagion of COVID 19 while Governments’ prohibition of certain cultural disciplining of children will embolden occupiers to caution elderly neighbours who may ignore its social distancing requirement in common Child discipline.

Rethinking Housing Schemes:

Post COVID 19, Government of Lagos State and Lagos Mortgage Board (LMB) should rethink Lagos Home Ownership Mortgage Scheme (Lagos HOMS), which is the Government’s initiative to encourage and support home ownership of First-Time Buyer (FTB) resident within the State to purchase decent and affordable homes through the provision of accessible mortgage finance.

Given the Speaker of House of Representative’s COVID 19 speech and, the House of Representatives’ commitments to “do all within their powers” to ensure that Nigeria’s critical sectors are dignified and better placed to efficiently serve Nigerians, we submit that housing forms integral part of national critical sectors and we encourage the House of Representatives to live up to its Speaker’s COVID 19 speech. Articulating workable polices for developing national housing schemes is the work of Governments at all tiers including the private sectors.

Government of Lagos State should be clearly committed to phase out Nigeria’s bedsit (face-me-i-face-you) apartments given that it is nearly a media culture or culture medium for epidemics and pandemics that include rodents driven Lassa fever or unclean water supply associated with cholera or human contact-driven coronavirus.

The Federal Government should rethink its intention to phase out mud houses in Nigeria. – The Nigerian Government had tasked Nigerian Building and Road Research Institute (NBRRI) to propose more cost-effective ways of building houses in view of its effort to phase out mud houses in Nigeria. This appears inconsistent with the claims of Nigerian renowned Dr. Demas Nwoko’s BBC Igbo Radio interview that mud houses should be encouraged as a national housing model.

It is a generally held view that, in tropical countries, traditional houses are more sympathetic to the prevailing climate and provide comfortable interiors. A typical traditional building of earth, maintains a high level of internal thermal comfort, regardless of prevailing solar radiation outside (Iwuagwu Ben Ugochukwu & Iwuagwu Ben Chioma M. Local building materials: affordable strategy for housing the urban poor in Nigeria)

In fact, the Federal Government’s action plan on phasing out mud houses nationally is contrariwise to compressed earth blocks (CEBs) technology, which Iwuagwu Ben et. al argue that it has caught the interest of many architects searching for sustainable building technology, and has committed them to the task of building with earth as a modern material.

– The Governments should abandon that policy and focus on phasing out bedsit (face-me-i-face-you) apartments particularly within Lagos State and nationally. Federal and State Governments ought to use efficient tax regimes to phase out bedsit (face-me-i-face-you) apartments.

It can achieve this by creating an index of bedsit (face-me-i-face-you) apartments in the State. The aim of the index will include tax rebate on building plan approval and other regulatory approvals, consent fee for Governor’s consent or mortgage and related transactions, land use charge, and capital gains taxes. The Federal Government should rework national housing fund or develop housing intervention funds that will be accessible to property developers who seek to develop bedsit (face-me-i-face-you) apartments to modern housing at single or zero digit interest rate on long term basis.

This will incentivize property developers within each State to focus on joint ventures or land purchases from bedsit (face-me-i-face-you) apartment owners in order to develop better residential properties which will assist Government in delivering on its housing plans.

Additional incentives may be provided to encourage rapid housing investment which will assist in phasing out bedsit (face-me-i-face-you) apartments within the State such as additional tax rebate for property developer who will include tree planting or gardens in their proposed plans with certain criteria and accounting metric as well as using compressed earth blocks.

Assertions of Prof. T. G. Nubi, Director of University of Lagos Centre for Housing Studies’ National Housing Initiative February 2015-2019 Policy Agenda for Creating 4 Million Homes in Nigeria are instructive to all stakeholders. He reaffirmed the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Housing’s preceding statement when he stated that millions of Nigerians are homeless while other millions are living in slum and dehumanizing environment. He considered a national lifestyle more dangerous than the Ebola scourge – now COVID 19.

Drawing confident hope from Nigeria’s collective defeat of Ebola, he submitted that we can similarly defeat homelessness as well as bedsit (face-me-i-face-you) apartments – through integrated approach to national housing plans.

Prof. T. G. Nubi (supra) interestingly recommended 3 core national housing initiative strategies as follows:

• Home Completion Loan Scheme
• Co-operative home completion loan scheme
• Individual Developers’ home completion loan scheme
• Regeneration
• Slum improvement programs
• New Build
• Co-operative Housing Program
• Federal Government’s Social Housing programme for key workers
• State Housing Corporation Building programme
• Local Government Housing Programme
• Private Sector Delivery
• Concessionary Projects
• Real Estate Developers
• Individual developers

Conclusion: 

Governments should be fully committed to phase bedsit (face-me-i-face-you) apartments in Lagos and nationally for obvious reasons such as its health implications for the Country. Various studies including the strategies proposed by University of Lagos’ Centre for Housing Studies should be taken into account in adopting an integrated approach to national housing and phase out of bedsit (face-me-i-face-you) apartments. Our faithful hope is that COVID 19 should not spread to these classes of Lagos or Nigerian residents.

Meanwhile, Governments should more effectively thinking through its policies by engaging professional reputed for work ethics as Consultants and advisers instead of engaging any such persons on political affiliation considerations.  Professional bodies, interest groups, property developers should urge Governments to implement a more integrated approach to national housing aimed at a long-lasting solution to housing deficit and sub-human residences which will safely contain any other pandemics or epidemics in Nigeria.

Uchenna Eze is an in-house counsel in a leading property developing company in Lagos and Osita Enwe is a managing associate at SRJ Legal Practitioners and teaches business law at ITT Lagos.  You may email your comments or critiques to them through oenwe@srjlegal.com