ABANDONED TO ROT AWAY…1

 Properties built at great should be put to productive use

Citing a 2021 report of the Nigerian Institute of Quantity Surveyors, which identified approximately 11,866 federal government properties and buildings abandoned across the country, the House of Representatives recently mandated a special ad hoc committee to investigate the issue. House Minority Leader, Kingsley Chinda, who cited findings from the NIQS report said neglected projects represent approximately 63 per cent of all federal building initiatives undertaken since Nigeria’s independence. He lamented that the nation was wasting prime assets.

But there have been many such committees by the National Assembly, while several buildings that could be converted to profitable economic assets continue to lie in waste. “Some agencies of government operating in states across the country are experiencing challenges in finding office accommodation due to difficulties in paying rent,” according to Iyawe Esosa, who moved the earlier motion that was unanimously adopted by his colleagues in May last year. “Reports have revealed that over 50 assets confiscated from politically exposed persons, civil servants, and other individuals are currently unoccupied and rotting away.”

 It is indeed baffling that authorities in Nigeria seem not to consider many of these edifices, built over several decades ago but which are currently in disuse across the country, as part of what should make up our national wealth. Apart from the potential positive social impacts being lost, these facilities, if put to productive use, can help provide jobs for a considerable number of our young people.

There are several abandoned offices and houses all over Lagos resulting particularly from the movement of the seat of the federal government to Abuja. Some of the buildings include the old National Assembly Complex at Tafawa Balewa Square, the Independence building, which housed the Defence Ministry and former Federal Ministry of Commerce at Tinubu Square, the Federal Ministry of Works and Housing, Ministry of Education building and the NITEL building. Others are former Supreme Court building, former Navy Headquarters on the Marina, the NNPC Complex in Ikoyi, and the NITEL offices at Falomo and Iponri. There is also the uncompleted 18-storey National Provident Fund Building (Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund) off the Lagos-Badagry Expressway, which reportedly has become a haven for kidnappers, ritualists and armed robbers. Many of these buildings, which are very much suitable for conversion into other uses, are lying fallow, and have become more or less ‘dead capital’.

 Across the country, many properties belonging to individuals, states and the federal government have either been abandoned, or underutilised, and constituting danger to lives and property. But it speaks to failure in leadership that these prime national assets that should ordinarily add up to what a country flaunts as its economic strengths are left to waste away. Simply because the relevant authorities have refused to turn them into the economic goods which they should be. Today, the story of several of these vital assets owned by the federal government, especially outside Abuja, is that of abandonment.

If we may ask, why is it a huge challenge to the government to consider and enact a policy that would guide the use and management of Nigeria’s national assets? What would it take from the government to consider and implement management models for these assets? And if the federal government cannot manage these edifices, why not hand them over to the government of the states where they are domiciled or sell them to private investors so they could be put to some good use?

· To be concluded tomorrow