• Says not scared of difficulties in Rivers land acquisition and administration
The Mayor of Housing, My-ACE China, has unveiled his passion for real estate business and cause of his drive to turn around the sector in Rivers State.
The man known as the Real Estate Success Strategist, who is the CEO of the Housing and Construction Mayor Limited, said he is not scared of the difficulties in land acquisition in some parts of the country, saying the bigger the difficulty, the bigger the reward. He also told National Accord that he is ready to go where other investors flee from.
He believes that land tenure system and the menace of land grabbing in Rivers State’s land administration space are not enough to deter dedicated and serious estate developers.
The CEO spoke in Port Harcourt admitted that land issues were actually a big problem, adding that those problems made it impossible for investors to come to the state.
For him, however, where others are running away from is where he said he runs to. “That is my nature. If you are able to crack that thing chasing others away, you will capture the right to scale. That is why I keep hammering on the revitalization of the Rivers State Geographical System (RivGIS).
He reminded the state that the Land Use Act gave every governor the right to every land in that state. “The aboriginal owners of the land are first owners; the next are the traditional rulers of that area. When RivGis wants to map land, they know the boundaries of the area and the surveyor will map the original land and make sure everybody’s land is registered in the system.” He said this would make it easy for the government manage the land administration however they wanted.
He said where he ventured into, Alesa in Eleme local council area, the government did do that. “I do not need to go to the community because RivGis would have already paid them. RivGis can now advise me that when you get to that community, give so, so type of jobs to the people, etc. I can now have a soft MoU with the community.”
He revealed his driving passion, saying: “The difference between me and others is that they are in real estate but real estate is in me. So, we can’t stop seeking collaboration.”
He used the opportunity to call for sanitization of the estate development subsector to weed out charlatans. He urged the Rivers State government through RivGIS to demand professional membership certificates from those coming in to practise. “Even the EFCC is asking questions. Let RivGis be made strong, let them screen us.”
Admitting that the state has potentials but is faced with housing deficit, he said Nigeria needs N61 trillion for both the core and ancillary costs to close the 28m housing deficit. He commended Gov Sim Fubara of Rivers State for starting 20,000 low-cost houses that may be scaled up to 100,000. He however admitted that there were challenges and prospects in the housing sector in Rivers State.
“The housing deficit in Rivers State is worse because it is a one-city state making most persons to cluster in the state capital, the oil city. By this, of the population of about 7m people in the state, over 5m is congested in the state capital, PH. In terms of city congestion PH is second most congested. Other states may have their population spread around”.
He regretted that the fundamental is that there is no agency in charge of all matters relating to lands and housing. In Rivers State, there are about five ministries and agencies looking after the sector: Ministry of Lands, Ministry of Housing, Ministry of Urban Development, the Surveyor-General’s Office, and more. In this situation, none has responsibility to collate all matters and interface with the public. “I would say, return to RivGis idea as way out in Rivers land title stalemate. The way out is to systematize lands and housing subsector.”
The Mayor of Housing said the ease of doing business (EoDB) in Abuja is 100 times faster than in Rivers State. He said The AGIS (Abuja Geographic Information System) has done an excellent work in mapping all the lands in the FCT, settling all the aboriginal owners, acquiring all the lands from the owners and keeping it for the FCT for land allocation, land use, and land purpose. The summary of all this, he stated, is that; “In 60 days, you come and pick your certificate of occupancy (CofO) without visiting any director, any permanent secretary, or any governor.
“Malicious sale of land would go. You don’t need to carry any file anywhere. No bureaucratic bottlenecks or corrupt involvement is encountered.”
He said lack of continuity in government killed RivGIS. “The failure of RivGis is lack of policy continuity and lack of scale of priority. Without continuity, politics is a liability.
On what attracted him to Gov Fubara, he said: “One of the things that attracted me to the Sim Fubara administration is the humility for continuity. To know you did not start this project but because you have the interest of the people at heart, you continue it, even in the midst of political crisis.
According to the Mayor of Housing, Governance in Nigeria is such that politics is prioritized over valuetics. “And when people are saying that the present governor has scored zero because he continued and completed the projects that his predecessor started, I am wondering what planet these guys are speaking from.”
He also identified property as Nigeria’s 2nd most lucrative sector: “The second most lucrative sector after oil in Nigeria right now is property.
He observed that he Director-General (DG) in the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) was pushing on her own, and that “the governor has said he started real governance in February 2024. We know that things are not where they should be but we are very optimistic they are going to be far better because of the body language of the governor. We in the private sector want to see more PPP initiatives and projects.”
The difficulty of having access to property is when you go solo, but when the government partners with you, they make access to land, documentation, and certificates easy, easy.
On what investors want in the Fubara administration, the Mayor of Housing said, “What investors want is ease of land papers. As an offshoot from the summit where investors expressed difficulty in getting land papers (certificates of occupancy), access to land, etc. I am sure this governor will follow through. Continuity alone is a boost of confidence for the private sector.
He noted that The governor needs to as a matter of fact sit down with group leaders especially captains of industry and technocrats and develop a white paper from the summit’s panel discussions. The governor can ask and find out those who can execute needed tasks in certain sectors such as expertise in mapping Rivers State and plan it vis-à-vis the part that has not yet been developed. This map should be in the public domain.
Commenting on the issue of land grabbing in the state, he explained that why there is a lot of land-grabbing at the moment is because there is no system now. When there is crisis, things are not organized, fraudulent people take advantage.
“Do you know that in this state, people sell one land to over three buyers? This is because there is no system to track land transactions in the state. Nobody knows who owns the land and who buys. If RivGis had been made to work, these things would be a thing of the past. All you needed was to go to RivGis, confirm who owns the land, pay, and come back to RivGis to do documentation,” he said.
He disclosed that one of the things that motivate him is that the tallest building in Nigeria is the Cocoa House in Ibadan. It was not built on the back of mortgage but cooperative.
“But, if I don’t breathe, I cannot do an experiment because if it fails, my money goes. So, we want to make money in the luxury space and plough back to low-cost or alternative raw material buildings,” he said.
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