FG May Go Tough on Owners of Unoccupied Buildings in Abuja, Environs

•Houses unoccupied after three months to pay triple ground rent

•Govt asks BUA to rebrand new, cheaper stock to beat profiteers

Emmanuel Addeh in Abuja

In the coming days, the federal government may take tough decisions to curb the problem of massive unoccupied buildings in Abuja, especially those that have been uninhabited for over three months.

The Minister of Housing, Ahmed Dangiwa, who spoke when he toured several government housing construction sites in Abuja and Niger, disclosed that henceforth, those who insist on neither living in nor giving out their houses will have their ground rents tripled.

The locations visited by Dangiwa included the Mega City Project at Jibi Village, by Kubwa Express being developed by Brains & Hammers and financed by the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria (FMBN). It has 1,250 housing units, including 600 two-bedroom terrace bungalows and 650 three-bedroom terrace bungalows, with commensurate infrastructure.

Also visited were the Apo-Guzape Housing Project financed by the Federal Housing Authority (FHA), with 102 units; the Public-Private Partnership between  FHA & ENL of 764 units as well as FHA & Bauhaus.

Also visited was the Prototype Housing Scheme, Suleja, Niger State, with 232 units, National Housing Project (NHP) in Gwagwalada , with 216 units and Gwagwalada Housing Project, comprising over 200 units already developed by FMBN.

The minister also inspected the 108 units being developed for the NHP and 100 units being developed by the Head of Service (HoS) through the Federal Integrated Staff Housing (FISH) programme.

Dangiwa, on the sidelines of the two-day tour, argued that when the ground rent of the several houses and estates in Abuja is tripled, owners would be compelled to give them out to tenants.

The minister stated that the government was about commencing a census of the estates that are not occupied in the capital city as many residents do not even have houses to live in.

“There are lots of abandoned estates, especially in Abuja and the vicinity. I think, in some other states, we do have a few of them. What’s important is that now we want to take stock of all those abandoned houses. Then, we interface with the owners of the abandoned houses.

“We ask them what do you want? Do you want to keep these houses? If you want to keep them unoccupied, the government will charge you triple ground rent instead of the single ground rent that we charge.

“That will force them to put it on rent for whatever amount or sell them off because you can’t keep saying that we have housing deficit and empty houses when we have a lot of empty houses that are being completed and left unoccupied.

“ So, we have told the department of lands and urban and regional planning in our ministry to take stock of those estates and give us the names of the proprietors so that the owners of those estates will be informed of our plans,” he stressed.

According to him, it doesn’t make sense that Nigeria has an enormous amount of housing deficit and yet has plenty empty estates and houses unoccupied.

 “Any estate that has stayed more than three months unoccupied, we’ll start charging them triple ground rent. That’s what we intend to do,” he explained.

On the recent announcement by BUA cement that it was slashing the price of the product and reports that the impact was not being felt by the consumers, the minister  blamed the middlemen for selling at high cost even when BUA sells to them at reduced prices.

To ensure that profiteering by the middlemen is stopped, the government advised BUA to rebrand the new stock which comes at cheaper prices.

“It shows that the profit they (middlemen) are getting is exorbitant. This is what we can do to ensure that Nigerians get better prices for what they buy.

“We have to commend BUA Cement company for the fact that they have come to assist the common man. They have reduced the prices of their cement but most of the people who sell at higher prices than BUA claim that they bought it at higher prices and they have to make sure they exhaust that amount.

“ So, we are now trying to reach out to BUA to mark the new ones they are producing now with a different brand so that we know that this brand is the brand BUA produced at a cheaper price so that anybody that sees that kind of cement will know that it’s supposed to be bought at a cheaper price.

“We have to commend BUA and we are calling on other cement producers to key into that and see that they bring relief to the common man in the country” the minister stated.