Address's by the minister of power, babatunde raji fashola
ADDRESS DELIVERED BY HONOURABLE MINISTER OF POWER, WORKS AND HOUSING, BABATUNDE RAJI FASHOLA, SAN AT THE 5TH NATIONAL COUNCIL ON LANDS, HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT, HELD IN ILORIN, KWARA STATE, ON THURSDAY AUGUST 25, 2016
Ladies and Gentlemen:
I would start this address by expressing the
gratitude of the Federal Government to the
government and people of Kwara State for
accepting to host this annual council of Lands,
Housing and Urban Development.
His Excellency, Mr. Abdulfatah Ahmed and
members of his government especially the
Commissioner for Housing and Urban
Development, Hon. Muideen Alalade have been
wonderful hosts by all accounts against the odds.
Indeed, it is against the odds. This is because
there was every excuse to avoid some of the
expenses, no matter how little, that hosting this
event have demanded.
This is because of the competing demands for
increasingly hard to earn income amidst the
various needs that state and local governments
have to fund.
But just as the Federal Government has
committed to spend more in spite of earning less,
in order to provide inclusion, and create jobs, I
salute the committed leadership that the Governor
of Kwara is providing, and the policies that are
being implemented.
This is the kind of leadership that is required in
difficult global economic environments in which
no one is spared.
It is such forward looking, problem-solving
initiatives that inform the choice of this year's
theme which is: "Building Adequate Capacity of
Professionals, Artisans and Tradesmen in the built
environment."
As you will be aware, one of the decisions taken
by the Buhari administration is to increase capital
spending in the 2016 budget to 30% of the N6.06
Trillion total budget.
This is change for some of those who ask what
has changed.
It is a welcome departure from spending 10% of
N4 Trillion as capital expenditure.
What this means is that unlike in the past, up to
2015, when only about N400 Billion was planned
for capital spending and indeed much less was
actually spent, in 2016 about N1.8 Trillion is
planned for capital spending with a commitment
to fund it.
But this is not the end or purpose. This is only
the means to get to the end.
The end is to reflate and stimulate the economy
back to growth.
To provide opportunity for inclusion, whereby the
growth translates to employment, provides
incomes for ordinary and hard-working people;
who are then able to put food on their tables and
participate in the building of Nigeria.
But I must also advise that inclusion and
employment will not happen, if the people for
whom the budget is made, abdicate the
responsibility for building, to foreigners, or prefer
foreign goods to locally made ones.
What will happen is that the budget will work, the
money will be spent, and the benefit will be
transferred to foreign countries and factories
where the professionals reside or where their
imported goods are made.
So one objective of this council meeting and its
theme is to emphasize to all members of the built
environment that it is only those who are willing
to act, who are willing to work, and who are
willing to get their hands dirty, by blasting rocks,
moving sand, cement, iron rods, making doors,
molding blocks, pouring concrete and so on that
will readily find inclusion in this economic
process.
This is the same process that built Europe's
infrastructure, that of China and many parts of
the Middle East.
It is the process by which we will rebuild our
economy. This is part of what diversification
means. This is part of what the President means
when he talks about diversifying the economy
through agriculture and mining.
It is from agriculture that we will get wood and
timber to build, and from mining we will get sand,
rocks, cement and tiles to furnish our houses.
This is why our housing policy is critical to drive
the economy in this direction.
Last week, I unveiled our housing roadmap and
the progress we have made, and the steps that
remains to be completed.
I will repeat some of what I said without being
too long.
First is that a national housing program must
have national acceptability in terms of diversity of
design in response to cultural and climatic
diversities.
We have finalized and settled on 6 (Six) designs
classified into 2 (Two) broad sets of designs : a.
bungalows in the north and b. blocks of flats in
the south.
All of these were achieved by our local architects
in the Ministry with a voluntary contribution from
outside the ministry but with all of it totally home
grown. (So the inclusion and capacity building
has started from the design stage).
The next step is to standardize these designs,
windows and fittings and all of these have been
done - Again by local capacity.
The third step is to build industrially and reduce
construction time. We are using local capacity to
leverage international capacity to achieve this.
I listened to a Report yesterday that the Empire
State Building, a 102-storey building was built in
the time of the great Economic depression by
3,400 in only 13 months .
This is the type of capacity and inclusion we seek
to develop to inspire hope.
The fourth step is to provide fittings locally and
we have resolved to use only the following Made
in Nigeria items:
i. Doors
ii. Windows
iii. Tiles
iv. Ceilings
v. Plumbing accessories
vi. Cables
vii. Paint
viii. Ironmongery
This is where we hope to receive the support of
local builders, artisans and tradesmen in capacity
building.
There will be no capacity without opportunity.
We are offering the opportunity.
Other issues such as financing and mortgages are
not relevant for our purpose today.
What is relevant to our purpose is that we will
require hundreds of thousands of doors, windows,
roofing materials, gallons of paint, plumbing
materials and other accessories. They will have to
be produced by our men and women.
Therefore as a government, the Buhari
administration has provided the opportunity for
the professionals, artisans and tradesmen in the
built environment to show what they can do and
build capacity, while building Nigeria.
Ladies and gentlemen, still on capacity building,
let me also say that in the Power and Works
sections of our Ministry, our attitude is no
different.
Not only are we aggressively pursuing our
roadmap of incremental to stable and ultimately
uninterrupted power, the Ministry has encouraged
the use of locally made meters, wires and
galvanized sheets for Transmission equipment
and we are seeing some positive if not yet
sufficient responses.
This is the way to keep jobs at home and build
capacity for inclusion.
Our road construction is also based on achieving
our economic objectives of growth through critical
sectors in the short term.
Therefore, with limited resources, we have chosen
roads that connect states, roads that evacuate
goods from Sea and Airports, roads that transport
agricultural produce and roads that bear very
heavy traffic.
While we cannot cover all the roads across the
country, you will agree with me that roads like
Sokoto-Kotangora-Makera Highway, Kano-
Maiduguri, Jebba-Ilorin-Bode-Sadu, Ogbomoso-
Oyo, Lagos-Ibadan; Loko-Oweto, 2nd Niger
Bridge, Enugu-Port Harcourt Roads, fall within this
category.
Ladies and gentlemen, let me say with all
emphasis that our capacity as a people is bigger
than the sum total of our problems.
Problems must challenge us, as they now do, to
deliver the best of our capacities, and we must
resist the temptation to address our problems by
clichés.
One cliché that has dominated the public
discourse about our built environment and
artisanal capacities is that it is dominated by
foreign nationals such as Togolese and other
West African citizens.
With respect, that is not the accurate picture.
Yes, there may be Artisans from foreign West
African countries on our construction sites, but it
is not because we are unable.
It is partly because our Economy is bigger than
their own and they come to seek for inclusion and
opportunity in the sub-region beyond the shores
of their country.
It is also because we are signatories to a treaty
of free movement in the ECOWAS sub-region
otherwise you are unlikely to see them in such
numbers if they cannot freely cross the borders.
It is also partly because we are focused more on
other sectors such as banking, oil and gas and
telecoms.
This is why you will see that in Gambia, out of 12
(TWELVE) or so banks, 11 (ELEVEN) are Nigerian.
This does not mean that Gambians cannot bank.
This is why you will see that our Telecoms, Oil
and Gas companies and even our cement
companies are dominating the sub-regional
landscape.
What we must therefore do if we wish to
dominate the built environment is to make it
worthwhile.
We can do this by training people, which we have
done for almost a decade at state and federal
level. But that is not enough.
We must now consciously promote economic
opportunity by budgeting for capital spending and
utilizing homegrown and homemade materials as
we have now resolved to do.
Indeed, please ask yourself why anybody wants to
spend his time being an engineer or artisan when
government has been spending less than 10% of
the public purse on capital projects.
Why will people not go and ride motorcycles, or
look for oil and kerosene supply allocations, when
construction companies have been owed for work
done since 2014.
Why will our artisans want to build when
construction of houses is not an on-going and
yearly exercise.
Yes we are all building roads, schools and
bridges.
But how many housing estate construction is
going on in all the 36 States, and with what
intensity , and regularity; even at the time we
earned more petro dollars.
Now that the petro dollar has reduced, I argue
that this is the time to make the scarce resources
do more , include more people and deliver more
value.
One way to do this is for states to spend more on
housing construction. (1,000 on 1 (One) Hectare).
This is the change that the Buhari government
brings and this is the importance of this year's
theme, of “Building the capacity of professionals,
artisans and tradesmen in the built environment.”
Let us build houses for ourselves, by ourselves, in
order to build our own prosperity.
Babatunde Raji Fashola, SAN Honourable Minister of Power, Works and Housing
Ladies and Gentlemen:
I would start this address by expressing the
gratitude of the Federal Government to the
government and people of Kwara State for
accepting to host this annual council of Lands,
Housing and Urban Development.
His Excellency, Mr. Abdulfatah Ahmed and
members of his government especially the
Commissioner for Housing and Urban
Development, Hon. Muideen Alalade have been
wonderful hosts by all accounts against the odds.
Indeed, it is against the odds. This is because
there was every excuse to avoid some of the
expenses, no matter how little, that hosting this
event have demanded.
This is because of the competing demands for
increasingly hard to earn income amidst the
various needs that state and local governments
have to fund.
But just as the Federal Government has
committed to spend more in spite of earning less,
in order to provide inclusion, and create jobs, I
salute the committed leadership that the Governor
of Kwara is providing, and the policies that are
being implemented.
This is the kind of leadership that is required in
difficult global economic environments in which
no one is spared.
It is such forward looking, problem-solving
initiatives that inform the choice of this year's
theme which is: "Building Adequate Capacity of
Professionals, Artisans and Tradesmen in the built
environment."
As you will be aware, one of the decisions taken
by the Buhari administration is to increase capital
spending in the 2016 budget to 30% of the N6.06
Trillion total budget.
This is change for some of those who ask what
has changed.
It is a welcome departure from spending 10% of
N4 Trillion as capital expenditure.
What this means is that unlike in the past, up to
2015, when only about N400 Billion was planned
for capital spending and indeed much less was
actually spent, in 2016 about N1.8 Trillion is
planned for capital spending with a commitment
to fund it.
But this is not the end or purpose. This is only
the means to get to the end.
The end is to reflate and stimulate the economy
back to growth.
To provide opportunity for inclusion, whereby the
growth translates to employment, provides
incomes for ordinary and hard-working people;
who are then able to put food on their tables and
participate in the building of Nigeria.
But I must also advise that inclusion and
employment will not happen, if the people for
whom the budget is made, abdicate the
responsibility for building, to foreigners, or prefer
foreign goods to locally made ones.
What will happen is that the budget will work, the
money will be spent, and the benefit will be
transferred to foreign countries and factories
where the professionals reside or where their
imported goods are made.
So one objective of this council meeting and its
theme is to emphasize to all members of the built
environment that it is only those who are willing
to act, who are willing to work, and who are
willing to get their hands dirty, by blasting rocks,
moving sand, cement, iron rods, making doors,
molding blocks, pouring concrete and so on that
will readily find inclusion in this economic
process.
This is the same process that built Europe's
infrastructure, that of China and many parts of
the Middle East.
It is the process by which we will rebuild our
economy. This is part of what diversification
means. This is part of what the President means
when he talks about diversifying the economy
through agriculture and mining.
It is from agriculture that we will get wood and
timber to build, and from mining we will get sand,
rocks, cement and tiles to furnish our houses.
This is why our housing policy is critical to drive
the economy in this direction.
Last week, I unveiled our housing roadmap and
the progress we have made, and the steps that
remains to be completed.
I will repeat some of what I said without being
too long.
First is that a national housing program must
have national acceptability in terms of diversity of
design in response to cultural and climatic
diversities.
We have finalized and settled on 6 (Six) designs
classified into 2 (Two) broad sets of designs : a.
bungalows in the north and b. blocks of flats in
the south.
All of these were achieved by our local architects
in the Ministry with a voluntary contribution from
outside the ministry but with all of it totally home
grown. (So the inclusion and capacity building
has started from the design stage).
The next step is to standardize these designs,
windows and fittings and all of these have been
done - Again by local capacity.
The third step is to build industrially and reduce
construction time. We are using local capacity to
leverage international capacity to achieve this.
I listened to a Report yesterday that the Empire
State Building, a 102-storey building was built in
the time of the great Economic depression by
3,400 in only 13 months .
This is the type of capacity and inclusion we seek
to develop to inspire hope.
The fourth step is to provide fittings locally and
we have resolved to use only the following Made
in Nigeria items:
i. Doors
ii. Windows
iii. Tiles
iv. Ceilings
v. Plumbing accessories
vi. Cables
vii. Paint
viii. Ironmongery
This is where we hope to receive the support of
local builders, artisans and tradesmen in capacity
building.
There will be no capacity without opportunity.
We are offering the opportunity.
Other issues such as financing and mortgages are
not relevant for our purpose today.
What is relevant to our purpose is that we will
require hundreds of thousands of doors, windows,
roofing materials, gallons of paint, plumbing
materials and other accessories. They will have to
be produced by our men and women.
Therefore as a government, the Buhari
administration has provided the opportunity for
the professionals, artisans and tradesmen in the
built environment to show what they can do and
build capacity, while building Nigeria.
Ladies and gentlemen, still on capacity building,
let me also say that in the Power and Works
sections of our Ministry, our attitude is no
different.
Not only are we aggressively pursuing our
roadmap of incremental to stable and ultimately
uninterrupted power, the Ministry has encouraged
the use of locally made meters, wires and
galvanized sheets for Transmission equipment
and we are seeing some positive if not yet
sufficient responses.
This is the way to keep jobs at home and build
capacity for inclusion.
Our road construction is also based on achieving
our economic objectives of growth through critical
sectors in the short term.
Therefore, with limited resources, we have chosen
roads that connect states, roads that evacuate
goods from Sea and Airports, roads that transport
agricultural produce and roads that bear very
heavy traffic.
While we cannot cover all the roads across the
country, you will agree with me that roads like
Sokoto-Kotangora-Makera Highway, Kano-
Maiduguri, Jebba-Ilorin-Bode-Sadu, Ogbomoso-
Oyo, Lagos-Ibadan; Loko-Oweto, 2nd Niger
Bridge, Enugu-Port Harcourt Roads, fall within this
category.
Ladies and gentlemen, let me say with all
emphasis that our capacity as a people is bigger
than the sum total of our problems.
Problems must challenge us, as they now do, to
deliver the best of our capacities, and we must
resist the temptation to address our problems by
clichés.
One cliché that has dominated the public
discourse about our built environment and
artisanal capacities is that it is dominated by
foreign nationals such as Togolese and other
West African citizens.
With respect, that is not the accurate picture.
Yes, there may be Artisans from foreign West
African countries on our construction sites, but it
is not because we are unable.
It is partly because our Economy is bigger than
their own and they come to seek for inclusion and
opportunity in the sub-region beyond the shores
of their country.
It is also because we are signatories to a treaty
of free movement in the ECOWAS sub-region
otherwise you are unlikely to see them in such
numbers if they cannot freely cross the borders.
It is also partly because we are focused more on
other sectors such as banking, oil and gas and
telecoms.
This is why you will see that in Gambia, out of 12
(TWELVE) or so banks, 11 (ELEVEN) are Nigerian.
This does not mean that Gambians cannot bank.
This is why you will see that our Telecoms, Oil
and Gas companies and even our cement
companies are dominating the sub-regional
landscape.
What we must therefore do if we wish to
dominate the built environment is to make it
worthwhile.
We can do this by training people, which we have
done for almost a decade at state and federal
level. But that is not enough.
We must now consciously promote economic
opportunity by budgeting for capital spending and
utilizing homegrown and homemade materials as
we have now resolved to do.
Indeed, please ask yourself why anybody wants to
spend his time being an engineer or artisan when
government has been spending less than 10% of
the public purse on capital projects.
Why will people not go and ride motorcycles, or
look for oil and kerosene supply allocations, when
construction companies have been owed for work
done since 2014.
Why will our artisans want to build when
construction of houses is not an on-going and
yearly exercise.
Yes we are all building roads, schools and
bridges.
But how many housing estate construction is
going on in all the 36 States, and with what
intensity , and regularity; even at the time we
earned more petro dollars.
Now that the petro dollar has reduced, I argue
that this is the time to make the scarce resources
do more , include more people and deliver more
value.
One way to do this is for states to spend more on
housing construction. (1,000 on 1 (One) Hectare).
This is the change that the Buhari government
brings and this is the importance of this year's
theme, of “Building the capacity of professionals,
artisans and tradesmen in the built environment.”
Let us build houses for ourselves, by ourselves, in
order to build our own prosperity.
Babatunde Raji Fashola, SAN Honourable Minister of Power, Works and Housing
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