Enormous Opportunities Are in PPP Urban Regeneration Projects, Says Fashola

.Khaled El Dokani: Making cities livable, productive best strategies for growing economies

Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola has said there are enormous opportunities in urban regeneration projects that the private sector can participate in with the support of the government.

Fashola also said his ministry undertakes urban renewal and slum upgrading works, after a thorough study of the situation and needs in the communities where they intend to intervene.

The minister stated this in his presentation, as Special Guest of Honour, at the 4th edition of the Concrete Ideas Webinar Series, with the theme ‘PPPs in Urban Regeneration, Global Best Practices, Nigerian Opportunities’, organised by Lafarge Africa Plc., recently.

This is just as the CEO of Lafarge Plc., Mr. Khaled El Dokani stated that “more than 80 per cent of the global GDP is generated in cities; making our cities more livable and more productive is thus one of the best strategies for growing our economies and improving welfare of millions of our people.”

The Concrete Ideas Webinar Series, now in its 4th edition, is a veritable platform for quality brainstorming and exchange of ideas designed to grow the nation’s economy and the outcomes are usually worthy of being incorporated in government’s policies.

On PPPs in urban regeneration projects, the Minister of Works and Housing, Mr. Babatunde Fashola said the opportunities in these regeneration projects for the private sector are enormous. “If you look at Adetokumbo Ademola today, I can tell you that there is a partnership between the Lagos State Government and the Eko Hotel Group and Ajose Adeogun was entirely reconstructed by the Zenith Bank Group in exchange for advertising rights and in the next few weeks, if that hasn’t happened already, it’s a major destination today for families for the Christmas lighting and the Christmas festivity. So, these are ideas that I think that we can replicate as we go along and I’m willing to listen and learn more from those who write the cheques about the possible ways in which we can structure partnerships to mobilise capital to regenerate our unplanned and planned communities that need a handle.”

Discussing the federal government’s intervention strategies for urban renewal works, Fashola said, “What should be emphasised is that whatever interventions we undertake, they are a result of technical diagnostic studies. We go to those communities, do a wholesale evaluation of what their realities and their challenges are and then we sort of try to help build it from the basic, but there is only so much that we can do and we will require the support and the input of not only the state governments, but also the local governments, the communities where these urban agglomerations that we talk about are actually situated. “The government so close to them has much more to do than perhaps we from the helicopter view at the federal government level.”

He said the federal government executed “a total of 67 different projects, costing us about N3.64 billion and these projects comprise of 40 roads, drainages, coverts, bore-holes, and street lighting projects and as we are bound to do we are bound to ensure some equity in their distribution.”

The minister said, “as far as urban regeneration goes, the first thing that perhaps comes to the mind is slums, but these are slums or blighted areas in the sense that they were unplanned, they are a response to rapid urbanisation and they are a response to the need for shelter and basic survival by people living on the margin.”

Fashola said another aspect of this type of dwelling “are well-planned cities that are now falling into some disuse and that need a facelift, a boost, an injection of capital to enable them respond to today’s needs.”

He listed some of the projects as “about 21 kilometers of paved roads within settlements in aggregate and you are looking at about 7.8 kilometers of street lighting powered by solar panels,” presenting one that was done in Uyo, Akwa Ibom. “We undertook a similar project in one community in Nasarawa and within two years it transformed the education. “This is not the standard but its impact is important to discuss, the students could study at night under this lighting. I would love for the lighting to be indoors but just to dimension its transformative impact school grades increased and the community came back to us and that led us then to start supplying them with solar home systems this happened in my other life when I was in I used to worship in the power ministry.”

He also presented water supply intervention projects in some communities, stating that even though it is centralised, “I would love to see the water in taps turning inside their homes but this is the difference between a four-kilometre journey to a river.”

Fashola wondered whether children who grew up in these slum communities would want to raise their families there. “As we embark on regeneration of these blighted, unplanned areas two things must stand at the back of our minds and the tough question to resolve one is that which child that grows up in this area wants to raise his own family there inspite of the intervention and after the intervention which child that grows up here in spite of the water we have brought the road pavement we have brought and the street lighting that we are brought wants to say I want my next generation to be produced here.”

On degradation of planned communities, he gave examples of places in Lagos like Yaba, Apapa, Surulere, G.R,A Ikeja, saying, “you will see that in the last decade and a half or so if you took a sample of those who now live in Victoria island and Ikoyi, they all grew up in Yaba, Surulere and that axis, but as the quality of infrastructure degraded they moved on to Ikoyi and Ikoyi itself is now becoming, if has not become, overcrowded and Ikoyi’s infrastructure is also aging. You will see therefore that over the last decade and a half the government of Lagos State has been intervening in the infrastructure of Yaba and Apapa and more recently Ikoyi and Victoria Island.

Also present at the webinar with the Minister were the chief host and Chairman of Lafarge Africa Plc., Prince Adebode Adefioye; and thought leaders that included, Mr. Mohamed Yahaya, Resident Representative United Nations Development Programme; Mrs. Mary Ojulari, President European Business Chamber Nigeria; Mr. Emma Wike, President, Nigerian Institution of Estate Surveyors and Valuers; Miss Tosin Oshinowo, Principal Architect CM Design Atelier; Mr. Simon Gusa, Curator, Project Manager, Future Benue Development Plan; Dr. Basirat Oyalowo, Research Manager, Center for Housing Studies University of Lagos and Mr. Femi Yusuf, Head, Mortal Innovation and Products Development Lafarge Africa Plc.

Welcoming participants, the Chairman of Lafarge Africa Plc., Prince Adebode Adefioye described the thought leadership webinar series, Concrete Ideas as “a leading platform for the exchange and generation of ideas on critical issues in the housing, infrastructure, and construction sectors.”

Prince Adefioye thanked the Minister of Works and Housing, Fashola, particularly, and other thought leaders for attending the webinar. “Great policies have roots in focused high quality well-formed and inclusive discussions between stakeholders the citizens and government of an economy.” He said, “Urban degeneration is a global challenge that can be solved through urban regeneration projects, resulting in the advancement of socio-economic and technological development of economics, including the creation of more efficient transportation system, sustainable livelihoods, employment generation, foreign investment, healthier citizenship, amongst many other gains.

“Today, you will find that Nigerian technology companies continue to attract millions of dollars in investments. The country definitely will do much better if we organise or reorganise and regenerate our cities to nurture vibrant hubs for the creative and current digital economy. We believe that through robust discussions and effective collaboration at all levels, we can transform our urban centres into vibrant communities that attract investments job creations, boost productivity and power economic growth.”

According to Khaled El Dokani, the theme of the 4th Concrete Ideas webinar follows the suggestion of the Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola to explore in greater detail the theme of the last edition, “New Solutions for Nigerian Urban Housing.”

He said, “More than 80 per cent of the global GDP is generated in cities; making our cities more livable and more productive is thus one of the best strategies for growing our economies and improving welfare of millions of our people. Great cities in the world today were once marred by slums and that urban regeneration projects have helped global cities attain their status. In line with our commitment to sustainability and our resolve to build progress for people and the planet Lafarge is keen on collaborating with stakeholders in finding durable strategies to unlock the massive gains in creating livable and connected cities. We have so much to gain in terms of reducing poverty improving the health of our citizens tackling climate changes. Urban regeneration, when executed successfully, calls for an integrated approach through which we engage architects economist, finance professionals, lawyers and many other stakeholders.”

According to the President of the Nigerian Institution of Estate Surveyors and Valuers, Emma Wike, to be able to successfully intervene in urban regeneration in communities, it is important to have need assessment of people who reside in these slum communities.

Wike said there are two sets of stakeholders in these slum communities, those who actually live there and those who live elsewhere but do their business in these communities, adding that both should be taken into consideration in the intervention projects.

Also to be considered in regeneration projects are the cultural and spatial requirements of the community, according to Miss Tosin Oshinowo, Principal Architect CM Design Atelier.

Oshinowo said it plays a massive role. “I’m currently involved in a project in Ingaranam in Borno State where we are providing over 300 homes for people who have been internally displaced due to the insurgency of Boko Haram and from the work that’s been done what has come across to me is quite important. It’s so important to consider both the cultural and spatial requirements of the community. For this particular project, I visited the community three times before the design was done to understand exactly how they live, their culture, how Islam plays a very significant role in the makeup of the home. “So, as an architect it’s important to understand that that’s a requirement of the culture and to design this space accordingly what you do have are situations where if the architecture isn’t informed by the way people live, people don’t tend to stay in those kind of locations.”

According to Dr. Basirat Oyalowo, Research Manager, Center for Housing Studies, University of Lagos, regeneration projects would be more effective when “co-produced by the people it’s meant to serve, the end-users, as well as the partners in that project. So, we hear of PPPs, we have public private partnerships and when we bring it down to scale in urban areas, in regeneration projects, we forget the other P and that is the people or C, if you want, the community. So for too long, the community has been subsumed under the P of the public. So if we want to reconcile their rights, if we want to know their rights, we need to recognise them as a partner in the project. So, we see them as equal partners not people that are to be called on when a decision has been made on what kind of regeneration project is going to happen, they must be at the drawing board when the decision is being made on the type of regeneration project that suits that area.”

In executing regeneration projects, it is important to adhere strictly to the rule of law to avoid abandonment, said Mr. Simon Gusa, Curator, Project Manager, Future Benue Development Plan. He said government has enough time to plan and execute a project and should do so.

On what the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is doing about housing and urban regeneration, Mr. Mohamed Yahaya, Resident Representative, said, “I think the first part is to look at the entire concept of urbanisation and see the challenge in its totality. Just to give you figures, by 2050, 70 per cent of the world population would be in urban environment and if you look at Nigeria at that time, the projection is that about 189 million people will be in urban areas and most of them will be in places like Lagos.

“So the question from UNDP perspective, and then anybody who is interested in sustainable development, is to say actually the sustainable development fight or the SDGs will be won or lost in cities in urban areas. So if we don’t get them right, forget about SDGs because that’s where most people will be residing. So, from a structural perspective, I think one way of looking at this is to say look how can we use the opportunity that we have to live from in terms of settlement and design and how or how we live in cities overall and I think the challenge we have is in many ways, we try to fix a problem in its locality which is important, without looking at the entire city or looking at the future of the city.”

He said UNDP recently launched a programme with the government of Lagos on smart city approach, essentially putting technology and data at the center of the city’s growth. “As we grow in cities we need to look at issues, for example on flooding and issues is not only about the construction part, it’s also about the environment that is changing, we’re entering more and more extreme climate. Climate change is a reality.”