By Victoria Ojeme

The Abuja skyline could be changing. A developer has expressed interest in building multiple skyscrapers to challenge the city’s high-cost accommodation subject to approval from authorities.

Abioye Oke, the chief executive of Lifestyle Asset Hub Limited, a Pan African Housing Solution Company in an interview in Abuja yesterday said Abuja’s city landscape dotted with terrace bungalows and duplexes are filling up valuable land that contain high-rise residential apartments with the advantage of housing more people.

Oke, was recently decorated as the Africa CEO of the Year 2021 during Africa Lives Development Conference and Awards at the Rwanda Capital City of Kigali organized by Africa Skill Centre, South Africa and LION Outreach International, USA.

He said “Our lack of use of our sky space not supporting access to prime housing locations. We are not building vertically in this country enough.  Imagine Abuja, how many vertical structures do we have in Abuja? Sometimes, you have a design, they will tell you, oh, you cannot go more than six floors, you cannot go more than seven floors, and it is not within flight zone.”

“What I am trying to say is we need to start encouraging developers to start building more vertical structures, so long that the developer can prove that there’ll be enough parking spaces for all the occupants.  I believe that by the time we start building vertically, the cost of selling each unit will drop with the right technology.

“Imagine a 2000 square metre land in Wuse II that could only take 10 units of terrace duplexes, where the government approve that you can go as high as 10 floors, it simply means that you can sat 5 duplexes together and that will give use 50 units, but on the condition that the developer will be able to prove that he can provide 200 parking space for the 50 units, whereby everybody has more than 2 parking spaces and their guest can still park. Those that will want villa can have it at a cost,” he said.

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“Based on our over five years of industry sectorial research in this sector, we realize that in the Nigeria housing sector there are lots of inconsistency in policies, the land use policy of government is also not supporting access to prime locations, also the kind of technology we still use to build today, they are very expensive, they are not very efficient and even the quality of design too makes up, because what makes an apartment affordable, it is not even the structure itself, it is the way it was designed by the architect from day one. 

“The world is smart now, there are lots of smart ways of building, where a window can be a source of power generation.  Now, the next phase of our development at LifeHub, we want all our roof to be solar roof, solar windows, whereby we have already the building standing is generating up to 50 percent of its power needs.”

He advised that government needs to come up with better policies when it comes to real estate development. 

“Most times you see developers entering bushes to start construction.  They will now be selling the future of a better tomorrow. They will tell their customers ‘yea, this road has been approved, they will do it very soon’.  If you go to Lokogoma area, you’ll see a lot of beautiful estate but to access them it is a serious hell.”

“There should be a policy by government that nobody builds on areas that there is no road service.  What that simply mean is that government will now even make it a business to be servicing areas.  Whereby for example a new layout comes out, government does all the route already, they know they’ll recover the money back, they know it is a business that is why government need to be run like a private institution.  They do the road, the sewage lines, there’s water, there’s power, then you can start selling the lands for development purposes, then, before you start construction, you must pay a particular task and every land owner that have a land in that area that have been service, there must be a timeline that they must develop, if otherwise government should revoke and give to those that are ready to develop.

“Nobody should be buying land for speculative purposes, so that when you buy a land in a service area, you’ll have five years to build, if you cannot then you sell it to someone who ready to use it,” he suggested.