Re: Can a foreigner own land in Nigeria?

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The writer wrote about an exception from the governor of Lagos state before a land can be acquire by a foreigner or an allien , but discouraging anybody no matter the colour or the race shows only our weaknesses because we may still be battling with our myopic thinking of the land belongs to us in this jet age.On one hand we are begging for foreign investment but we feel uncomfortable at least as shown in our policies that we may not welcome total acquisition of a plot of land without the allien (corporate entity,individual e.t.c) not going through the bureaucracy of seeking the state government consent especially in Lagos.
Objectively in one aspect we want to protect our lands been taking over by people with stronger economies so that we won't end up fighting to get same lands back unfairly like the Zimbabweans.
On the other hand we are shooting ourselves on the foot by discouraging allien from totally feeling at home in our country. Yes if I can't get a house to build a house in a country then you shouldn't expect me to invest all my life savings there.

Re-Housing: Tertiary Institutions Tasked on Local Content, The need to emphasis local content in our tertiary institution.

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The nation’s housing stock will improve considerably if tertiary institutions research and develop more local content building materials.
Union Homes Managing Director/Chief Executive, Mr. E. Austine Aikhorin said this yesterday when a delegation from the Department of Building, University of Lagos, led by Dr. K.T. Odusami, Head of Department, visited Union Homes Management.
Aikhorin, who particularly tasked institutions with good facilities for research, extolled the Department of Building, Unilag, for its quality scholarship, and urged them to join in the efforts to reduce the spiraling cost of home-ownership in the country, by focusing the department’s research and teaching programmes on values that would stimulate increased understanding, development and application of more local building materials, to supplement expensive and imported alternatives.
He said to speed up home-ownership, even at lower levels of income brackets, Union Homes has concluded arrangements to introduce Real Estate Investment Trust scheme (REITs) to Nigeria’s housing market.
REITs is an innovation that can sustain mass home-ownership at all levels, especially for young people and new employees
The scheme, already in practice in some Asian countries, is being introduced for the first time in Africa by Union Homes.
Dr. Odusami thanked Union Homes for its support of the Building Department and presented an award to the Primary Mortgage Institution.

The need to encourage research in our tertiary institutions to embrace local resources is long overdue, Western civilization or not what we have failed to do is marrying our so called civilization with our heritage and that is causing crises in the building industries.
As seemingly advanced and sophisticated the Asians are they have been able to retain their traditional architecture, they only have to research on the local materials and improve on it.
In our own case before civilisation we were using mud, raffia palms and other natural and available materials to build our houses but what we failed to do is to make further research and make these materials more durable, affordable and useful, this is no doubt the bane of our civilisation.
The undergraduate is young in heart and brain and is the best person to undertake the task of repositioning our building industry right from the school, therefore it gladdens my heart to know that the Union Homes are taking the initiatives of encouraging low cost housing shemes which can only be achieved when we invest in reseach and use our local materials.

Reasons why your contractor will fire you.

-You claim to know too much-this is the major reason some fail woefully when managing their contractors.
True he who pays the piper dictates the tune ,but not in the case where you have to make your contractor realise he is not in charge of your site.
Is good to point out your observations or mistakes when both of you are together alone.
-You must not ridicule your contractor in front of his subordinates or artesans, when you see anything that falls short of your expectations,call him aside and point out your observations to him, you don't need to do this infront of his subordinates else you will make him to lose grip and respect of his workers.
-You believe he should work for you for free.-this is one big mistake a lot of people are making.
No good thing comes easy or free or easy,one way or the other you must pay for it to get value.
The person happens to be your brother or family member does not apply. He must be paid, yes! he may not be able to refuse you, but if he is a criminal minded one then he will pay himself by colluding with the suppliers of materials and workers on your site to milk you.
-He is starved of funds without reasons, if adequate reasons are not giving but you keep starving your project of funds a time is coming that your contractor will lose
interest on your site and he won't take you with seriousness any longer. Construction industry is fast growing in Nigeria ,the earlier you realise that jobs are now everywhere for building contractors the better you will treat one that is efficient.
The man wants to take advantage of these opportunities and make money for himself,so your attitude may make him to take your work unseriously.
- Pilling unreasonable pressure on him to deliver-Pressure is good when you have the money to execute your project but you must be reasonable to listen to his advice or you may end up with a collapsed building, there are step by step proceses that you must follow strictly otherwise you will end up blaming yourself.
-Crashing or reducing time frame of project completion depends on how you are able to coordinate yourself with the critical areas well taking care of.
-When you also wants him to sacrifice quality for quantity. We all have a standard we maintain but some standards are built by experiences. Where you are coming from, knowledge imparted into you will determine the level of standard you have to do to maintain. There are minimum standards everybody in the profession must meet.
An engineer once told me that if you are a doctor you can only kill one person at a time due to negligence,but for an engineer,out of your negligence you can destroy an entire village.
So is important you consider safety first ,as the right measure will forestall collapse of building.