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| Barrister Babatunde Fashola, SAN |
Barrister Fashola has a high pedigree and his
legacy of excellent performance as governor of the ‘‘State of excellence’’ for
good eight years stands him tall among his peers while the good works are there
for all to see. For example, our visit to Ikorodu recently was revealing in
terms of infrastructural transformation.
However, our fears are that Fashola would not
be able to give housing the required attention it deserves in order to solve
the myriad of issues that hinder the nation’s housing delivery. There is
probably no other ministry that has more ex and current sectoral siblings as
Housing. At various times; housing has been hooked with various other sectors.
At a time, it was with Environment to have a
ministry of Housing & Environment. Some other time, it was Housing, Urban
Development & Environment. For long, Housing was famously merged with Works
& Urban Development in various dispensations.
At some other time it was Land &Housing.
One can go on and on. Now, it appears Housing’s siblings are Power and Works.
The strange one in the new equation is probably Power because it would be the
first time Housing would be hooked up with Power in the same ministry.
Fundamentally, all the sectors in the new
super ministry are the critical sectors the performance of which would
determine how far the country would go in its developmental strides and what
progress it can make in the comity of developing nations.
The sectors are all so important that they
require equal attention and commitments if the nation must move forward in
these areas. In fact, many would adduce the country’s general failure in the
development index to the dismal failure in these sectors.
Every ministry is important but even George
Orwell would let you know that all animals are equal but some are more equal
than others. In this context, the emergent ministry of Power, Works and Housing
can be likened to the elixir needed to grease the nation’s wheels to move
forward.
Take a quick look: a nation with a failed power
sector is a nation groping in darkness where dreams are cut short; can anyone
imagine a country without good roads and infrastructure for the movement of
goods and persons and to stimulate economic activities in all frontiers?
It is to imagine the worst of a truly failed
country with failed economy, failed everything cast in the mould of a banana
republic. And a failed housing sector is to imagine a modern man drawnback to
the early era where man lived on the tree top. Thus, the new ministry holds the
key to Nigeria’s future.
Barrister Fashola has credible credentials to
assume the headship of these key sectors as President Muhammadu Buhari had
found it expedient to merge them into one ministry. As a young man, he has
great drive, dynamism, rare intellects, energy and everything it takes to
record immense success in the new ministry.
It is a measure of the trust and confidence
the president has in him to appoint him minister over all these key,
troublesome sectors. The issues and challenges injust one of the sectors is
intimidating enough to make a minister grow grey hairs overnight.
Barrister Fashola is in for a very tough time
but he is equal to the task and certainly needs no pity, but we have this fear
for housing that just won’t go away. Our fears are that he would be so dissipated
deploying his time, energies and resources to Power and Works that little would
be left for Housing.
This is also founded on Barrister Fashola’s
record of not too impressive performance in housing as governor of Lagos State.
Whilst he recorded spectacular performance in several other sectors of Lagos
especially in infrastructural development, the same could not be said of
housing in the nation’s state of excellence.
His housing efforts were few and all of them
were built and tailored to meet elitist demand and not for the ‘‘common man’’
that ace Television star, Frank Olize
went searching for some years back. Perhaps, one would not blame the
ex-governor now minister because he was acting the typical script of his own
dispensation and times. In fact, not since the 80s has the country witnessed
the conscious and deliberate development of mass housing for the poor.
Even though widely criticised, ex-president Alhaji Shehu Shagari and former Lagos
governor, Alhaji Lateef Jakande, did
very well in this regard. Other governments’ efforts at state and federal
levels channeled in this direction are just as profit driven as the private
operator and have not benefited the mass majority.
With national housing deficit estimated at 17
million units by the World Bank and the Bureau of Statistics and increasing on
daily basis, many would wish for the declaration of a state emergency in the
housing sector. This is not likely to happen because Barrister Fashola does not
have the same passion for housing as he does for infrastructure. One would give
in to the other. Unfortunately, housing is likely to get the short end of the
stick.
Not even the recent pronouncement of the
minister that thousands of flats would be built all over the country would
douse our pessimism on housing expectations in the Barrister Fashola era. It
would make sense to tell Barrister Fashola not to build any houses at all
because even if he does, they will be hijacked by politicians as it happened
severally before, the poor would never benefit.
Ironically, this is a dispensation when we
need mass housing programmers at both federal and state levels to settle
millions of people who have been displaced by crises and natural disasters, not
just in the Boko Haram over-run North–East but also in Plateau as in Rivers and
indeed every other part of the country
Being a shrewd lawyer (which shows that the
professional background does not matter but the drive) superintending a
construction-driven ministry, the most we can expect from Barrister Fashola in
the housing sector in the coming days is an over haul of the land administration
system, land tenure system to remove the impediments that stand in the way of
acquiring land for development purpose.
Also, assessing him by his legacies in Lagos,
we are likely going to have upward review of land taxes accruing to the
government. But for what we already know him for, he is expected to provide the
infrastructure and access roads to new estates.
It is left to the private sector to come up
with initiatives for housing development efforts but the products of such
campaign will not come cheap to the end user and the monstrous problems of
housing would have been left largely unsolved. (Vanguard)
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