Nigerians’ concern today is daily living, not buying property—Omais Homes boss

The concern of most Nigerians today is about how to eat and be well, not how to buy property either for investment  or homeownership, Omochiere Aisagbonhi, the President/CEO, Omais Homes Property Investment and Development Company, has said.

Aisagbonhi  who made this observation at a press conference he addressed on the state of the nation and how it impacts on the property market, added that the economic situation has become so critical that average Nigerians are merely surviving, dreaming and hoping that things would get better.

Omais Homes has, over a decade of strong presence in the upper middle end of the property market, delivered quite a substantial number of homes for middle class buyers in the Ikeja GRA, Maryland, Opebi and Mende sub-markets in Lagos.

“The way it is today, we are confused operating in an economy that has no policy direction; the market is dull; people are not spending because everybody is more concerned about how to eat and be well, and not how to buy homes”, Aisagbonhi lamented, noting that many firms were already closing shop.

He took a swipe on the ‘new’ government in the country for being insensitive to the plight of the people, stressing that after 10 months of coming into power, the government ought to have brought succour to the suffering in the land culminating in biting fuel scarcity in an oil producing country.

Going down memory lane, Aisagbonhi who noted that Nigerians now live by faith and not hope, recalled that things started getting bad in 2014, but people said it was an election year, hoping that by 2015, with a new government in place, things would be better, “but here we are in 2016 and things are getting worse instead, meaning that there is no need to keep hoping for better days in this country”.

The real estate sector generally, according to him, has been badly affected by the high exchange regime and the import policies of the government, noting that through these policies, government  has been encouraging smuggling and denying itself of revenue that would have come from import duty payment.

“Our policy makers don’t seem to know the damage they are doing to this economy. Construction is one sector that should be used to stimulate activities and reflate the economy because of its multiplier effect in terms of creating jobs and generating wealth”, he posited.

Reacting to President Muhammadu Buhari’s directive to Alliance of Progressives Congress (APC)-controlled states in the country to deliver 250,000 housing units each as a way of fulfilling the party’s campaign promise of providing one million housing units annually, Aisagbonhi fumed, saying that “government has no business delivering housing to the people”.

“Don’t forget that we are now in a season of denial when government says something in the morning and comes back in the evening to say it did not say so; how are we sure they won’t come back to tell us they did not promise anybody any housing. Be that as it may, government has no business delivering housing. Its business is to provide enabling environment for the private sector to do their business”, he advised.

“Honestly, we have reached a time in this country when we should be asking ourselves questions on  what we should be doing to survive”, the CEO said, disclosing that though there was no known formula to remain in business, his company was considering reviewing their project portfolio with a view to scaling down the size of their future offering and also reviewing the price of existing ones.

He advised further that government should encourage entrepreneurs who pay their taxes, adding that there should be a policy that should compel banks to channel a certain percentage of their profit to the construction sector as a way of generating activity in the economy by creating jobs.