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Engr. Samson Ameh Opaluwah, the Vice Chairman, Council of Registered Builders of Nigeria in this Interview
with Esther Akpan and Suleiman Tajudeen X-rays Housing Delivery in Nigeria and other developmental Issues.
The Challenges, the prospect and opportunities for Nigerian engineers.
HOUSING THE HOMELESS
15 July-August 2020

Background
I am a professional builder and a civil
engineer I specialize in facilities
management, public procurement
and project management. I hold a
Bachelor's of Science degree with
first class honors in building from
Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria in
1978, I equally have a Master's of
Science degree in construction
engineering from Leeds University
in U.K and a Doctorate degree in
facilities management from St.
ClementsUniversity.
I have been in project management in
multi disciplinary consultancy firm
calledACHCON Nig Ltd. I have also
been a management staff of a cement
plant Benue Cement Company PLC
from where I transited to the
presidency and ended up in the civil
service where I retired as the director
of procurement in the federal
ministryof works.
As a science student during your
days in secondary school why did
you choose engineering as against
medicine, pharmacy and even
accountancyamong others?
First I will say that growing up, I
have been impacted and motivated
by engineers. Though my father was
a medical practitioner but in the
environmental where I went to
primary school, there was an
ongoing road construction at the
time, and sincerely I admired the
engineers and it may interest you to
know that my grandfather was a
contractor to the construction
company, So, I was closed to what
the engineers were doing and as a
primary school boy. I picked interest
Of course yes, medicine, I love
medicine and I intended to be a
medical doctor. So I was faced with
two enticing options and as a
Christian in my final year in secondary
school, I prayed to God for direction as
I was not sure which way to go. I
prayed whatever admission and course
I get first will carry the day and civil
engineering admission came first and
thatdoesit.
Reports from several housing
conferences put housing deficit in
Nigeria at 17 million. As a
professional, what does this means to
you?
As a professional builder and as the
current vice chairman of the council of
Registered Builders of Nigeria, we do
not brandish figures that are not
verifiable. When we talk of housing
deficit, we want to have the source of
the figures that are in use. Having said
that however, we are not saying that
there is no housing deficit. But perhaps
what some people are considering as
housing deficit is the standard and
quality of housing. And also the fact
that in the urban centers, we are
experiencing housing challenges. For
instance in the FCT, there are many
empty houses, yet we have many
people who are homeless, due to
government policies, because of the
economic situation, because of access
to housing, so if you ask me, I would
have just said what do I feel about the
situation. I must tell you that I feel very
bad become what it proves is simply
that we are still at the lowest level of
MARSIOWS hierarchy of needs. If
Nigerians are still talking about food
and shelter after Sixty years of
independence and a century of
nationhood, it means we have not
advanced at all as a human society and
that is the challenge and it is very
st
painful that in the 21 century, food and
shelter still remain a challenge for
Nigerians.
Like you have mentioned earlier,
there are quite a huge number of
empty houses in cities like the FCT,
would you admit that those houses
were not property targeted or ill –
conceived?
First of all, the policy of government is
CEO’S JOURNAL

key on the issues relating to housing
development. Government must
provide enabling environment for
houses to be built and for occupants to
find it easy to settle the bills for the
houses in which they live. Now, there
are two critical factors, one there
should be a concerted policy drive of
government to house people wherever
they live in the country secondly, there
is no free lunch anywhere therefore,
the citizens should be enabled to
access these houses and pay for them.
It is not supposed to be free. Around
the globe where we have well
structured housing development, they
make accessibility easy as no one who
is enabled will prefer to remain
homeless. My candid opinion is
policy shift that will unbundle all the
restrictions to home ownership. Such
as land. According to the land use
decree, you cannot own any piece of
land except one certify for you by a
governor and for you born in a place
where you have lived for years with
your grandfathers too, that land is not
owned by you. To used it as capital to
develop yourself, is only the governor
who has been vested with that
authority that can approve it, as a
result, we have our land tied down as
dead capital. So there must be access
to land by all. Secondly is the housing
finance concept, I do know that a
number of people are running away
from mortgages because of the
unattractive interest rate unlike in
developed countries, for somebody to
pay at the current rate, he needs to
have comfortable source of income.
But government can see this as a
necessity and cushion the exposures
of lenders by reducing the interest rate
if this is done even fresh graduates
would not want to rent a house if he
can buy a house the moment he is
done with the NYSC because of the
35years of work ahead to repay a loan.
Instead of those policies, what we find
is governmentbuilding houses and the
question is, how many houses can
governmentbuildfor thecitizens?
Government has no business in
building houses; its duty is to facilitate
the production of houses. Again I
must admit that my colleagues are not
doing what is expected of us, by now,
we should have come up with a
Nigerian House that can be solely
built by our own products and
materials and indeed the indigenous
technology that we grow up to meet,
dumping them and creating huge
deficit is not the way to go, we have
abandoned our local technology for
the western style and so the cost is
becoming astronomical. It is time to
go back to the basics. Yes you can say
the mud-house, the thatched roofs are
not lasting, but we should be thinking
about what to do to sustain their
durability. The university the
polytechnics and all of us in the
consultancy must go back to
backward integration to make our
indigenoushouses lastlonger.
You talked about funding gap, what
is the role of Federal Mortgage Bank
in this, does the FMBN has enough
capitalization?
Just like their name, they are
established to provide mortgages for
home buyers. But the question is do
they have sufficient capitalization. If
they have a population of 200million
people what is the target percentage to
benefit from mortgage facilities and
how much is the realistic cost of a
building and at what interest rate?
What is the life expectancy of
Nigerian, what is the income level,
how do we amortize the loan, these are
thequestions.
ArewelookingatSubsidy?
N0, I will not call it subsidy, but
enabling environment because if you
call it subsidy. It sound like a free
donationor freelunch,Butwhenwe
Say enabling environment, we are
looking at encouraging and enabling
citizens to know what they are to do
with the hope that someone is there
partnering with them which shows
that government is interested in their
welfare. Though you may argue that
some may abuse it, but I believe a
greater percent will make good use of
the opportunity, and of course, there
may be initial challenges which are
surmountable.
Crashing the cost of housing delivery
may require more local content,
development and addition, how can
weachievethis?
Right now, where we are is a research
office and we are into research on how
to crash the cost of housing delivery
and construction generally and our
target is to see how we can reduce by
40 percent. We are not doing any new
thing we are only attempting to review
our construction technology by
returning to the basics. If we are still
operating at a level of food and shelter
provision, we must as well go to how
t h o s e p e o p l e w e r e h o u s i n g
themselves and begin to work on the
various components. The element of
cost in our current production are
largely import based and even if we
set-up factory to produce building and
construction materials, they are
dependent on import as well and until
we begin to disentangle these and
come to what is the needful and when
we are done with our needs, we can
begin to look at fanciful building or
beautiful painting and coasting and
powering which are product of
modern technology. It is painful that
17 July-August 2020
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even animals do not lack where to
sleep and if we humans are
experiencing this challenge, it means
we are below the animals in terms of
feeding and shelter which is self-
inflicted due to colonization that
gaveus tastethatwecannotsustain.
Earlier, you mention the needs for
the universities, the polytechnics
and consultancy firms to return to
the basics, are you looking at
curricular review?
Yes, that is desirable, I say this
because we are in a dynamic world
and things are changing rapidly and
educational delivery is not immune to
change. People are teaching and
receiving lessons at home through
internet.
The only thing is that you change
based on your environment and what
you think is best for you, but in our
case, we did not do that and that
informs where we are today and that
is why we have graduates who have
no jobs. Five years after graduation,
The tertiary institution is meant to
take your intellectual faculty to such a
reasoning level that you will address
your life challenges,but when you are
unidirectional in thoughts, it means
education has not gone through you .
We m u s t t h e r e f o r e r e v i e w
educational system. For instance,
when the colonial masters establish
schools, they were meant to produce
man power to service them, now we
need manpower to service us and the
direction of our education must be
fine turned to achieves this objective.
If you have youthful population of 60
percent of 200 million populations
who are of a trainable level and we are
not doing this, how will they not
engage in social vices? Today no one
is resting. We must review our
educational curricula in a manner that
willserviceour needs.
It is disheartening to note that
construction companies import
l a b o u r a n d a r t i s a n s f r o m
neighouring countries. Are we
saying we do not have the
manpower?
Yes, we do not have the manpower
but the challenge is skills and as I
mentioned earlier that we have 60
percent or 120 million youthful
population out of 200 million, but the
question is are they skillful? As a
young man, I already had diploma at
20 in civil engineering and I was
trained in carpentry and till date, I
have a hammer on my table to do my
carpentry even though I am a
doctorate degree holder. You see the
francophone countries did not
abandon the technical school
bequeath to them by their colonial
masters unlike we did such that
everyone is going to secondary
school, university, polytechnic
nobody wants the artisanal work and
that is why there is a vacuum which
are filled by artisans from these
neighbouringcountries.
And how doweaddress this?
The good news is that government
and some private establishments are
doing a lot in this direction by setting
up vocational centers to address
technical manpower gap at a sub-
tertiary level. This means we are
going back to those days when we
used to have trade centers, craft
schools and technical schools that
had initially suffered stigmatization
as a result of the notion that such
trades are meant for the dull people.
Unfortunately many went to
secondary schools and could not
proceed to university and so remain
with no skill, with no academic
qualifications and no trade and for
those countries that did not abandon
the vocational trades; they are
exportingtheirlabourtous.
It is however heartwarming
that programmes like N-Power is
addressing some of these challenges
with training in six areas of the
construction industry has helped a lot
but that is just to address the level one
and must be embraced by the states.
We must as well encourage the
private sectors to establish trade and
vocational school like we used to
have in those days where girls were
trainedInknitting,sewing.
Wherever you turn, you see
engineering at work, but we are still
at this our level of development,
whatis wrong?
What is wrong is that we think we can
buy technology because we have
sudden money. If 1973 Arab-Israeli
war did not take place and Nigeria did
not found herself in sudden wealth,
perhaps we would have been better
than this. We are still drunk with the
oil wealth and that is why we are still
atthislevel.
Would you admit that this sudden
wealth is the reasons why we are still
grappling to have made in Nigeria
auto mobile?
Yes, because you could buy easily.
you see, if you can import easily and
you can afford it, why bother to crack
your head. Why do we have imports?
Let's look at this bottled water
produced by a subsidiary of our
company. If we say we have taste for
the one produce by Nestle, that is a
multinational company, then no one
will buy our own and if you put them
side by side, ours may be as good as
70-90 percent of Nestle and if we are
not patronized, we can not get to
Nestlé's level. That is one of the
factors killing industries in Nigeria. I
remember in the 60s, the spoon that
was order from Japan was such that
when you are taking rice, rice will be
falling down, but today, they have
perfected it. The China people we are
18 July-August 2020
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shouting today closed their doors to
the outside world for years to produce
what they need and that is the genesis
of China's industrialization.
In the nutshell, you support border
closure?
Infact, I don't want the president to re-
open the border anymore. We will not
die, we must produce what we need.
Those shouting against the closure are
not patriots and as a nation with the
largest concentration of black man,
we are a big problem and until we
develop. The black man will not
develop.
For example, if a student
enjoys throughout his studies, he will
not pass, we must therefore be ready
to suffer so that next generations will
notsuffer.
But this had led to increase in the
cost of goods such as rice for
example. Do we have the technology
for localproduction?
Whatever technology we have now,
we should continue to use and
continue to improve and perfect as we
move forward. I eat rice, produce in
my village in Idah in Kogi state
inspite of the stones or dusts that is
associated with it, we will continue to
patronize them, encourage them to
perfection. We must restructure our
tastetowhatwehave
With the signing of the African
Continental Free Trade Area, what
does this hold for Nigeria?
This is long overdue, we are 200
million in Nigeria and what is the
population of African? We are the
largest economy and in population.
So we have nothing to lose except that
we are not doing the right things, else
we ought to have taken over West
African market before now, China
will not come and compete here.
Nigeria should have been the one
producing what China is bringing.
The problem is that we are not
harnessing our strength to address our
weaknesses. For example if
Akinwumi Adeshina, the president of
African Developments Bank is
allowed to foster his dream such as
power Africa, feed Africa and other
continental programmes, we will
come out of the backwardness. But
because he wants to revolutionize
Africa, he is being attacked because
of his quest for power adequacy for
efficient and cost effective production
that will drive demand and progress.
So I agree it is a step in the right
duration and we must embrace it, run
with it. The black race is looking up to
Nigeria. We are the best example
because out of every five blackman is
one Nigerian and so it is easy for any
black man to claim to be a Nigerian.
For this reasons, we cannot afford to
disappointtheblackrace.
Let us look at local content act that
was signed by former president
Jonathan, how has the engineering
profession in Nigeria benefitted from
thisinitiative?
I hope you are aware that it is for the
oil industry and not too close to the oil
industry; however, I do believe there
is local content development
initiative and that board is headed by
an executive secretary who is an
engineer. But let me say here that it is
time for the oil industry to be in the
hands of Nigerians, even though we
have NNPC, it is not the one drilling
oil and if we want to have the best in
any production process, we must
controlthevaluechain.
If you are not in control of the value
chain you may likely not have what
you deserve and at the time you want
or at the cost you want it. If you are not
in control you may not get full benefit
and that is why what we get from oil is
too meager and we are satisfied with
it. This is not happening in other
countries. Yes you can outsource, but
you must be in total control. NNPC
should go into exploration with full
force, break up and venture into all
aspects of the industry on a
commercialbasis.
By October, Nigeria will be sixty
years after independence, where do
you want to see the nation at 100yrs
ofindependence?
Well am glad to inform you that am
six years older than Nigeria and by the
time Nigeria is sixty, I will be sixty six
by the grace of God. I must say that as
sixty five years old Nigerian and a
professional, I am disappointed, am
not happy about life in my country.
The dreams that we had as young men
after graduation in 1978 is
exasperated, I am sad that today, we
are far from those dreams and it is
painful and I believe my generation
share the same pain. Every time I read
the newspapers, people of my
generation are lamenting, they are
asking what has happened to our
dreams? However, I do know that all
hope is not lost, we will continue to do
what we can, we will light our candle
on our table to ensure that our children
are not discouraged. We must ensure
that nothing hinders them in
becoming whatever they want to be. I
want to see a Nigeria that is better than
what we had, the resources and the
capacity to do it are there and how we
have not been able to harness them to
provide good life for our people is
amazing. And just like you said on a
final note, we need to rediscover
Nigeria.
At the moment, we have lost
Nigeria and all hand must be on the
decktore-discoverNigeria.
19 July-August 2020
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HOUSING THE HOMELESS - Engr S.A Opaluwah

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HOUSING THE HOMELESS - Engr S.A Opaluwah