The Nigeria Institution of Estate Surveyors and Valuers (NIESV) has urged the federal government to convene a stakeholders meeting to address the high cost of rent in the country.
The president of NIESV, Sir Emmanuel Okas Wike, who spoke with our reporter on the sidelines of the unveiling of the institution’s Logo in Port Harcourt said such a stakeholders’ meeting would critically look into the unresolved issues concerning the monthly rent payment suggested by the Minister of Works and Housing.
He said the institution at the stakeholders’ meeting would give solutions on how to address most of the challenges posed by the high cost of rent in the country.
He said the government needed to bring down the cost of building construction, adding that once that was done, the high cost of tenancy rate would be addressed.
Wike said: “Government needs to call a stakeholders meeting where the issue of the high cost of rent will be discussed and we are willing to give them some of the solutions about most of the problems they think the high rent is causing in Nigeria.
“You cannot control what you don’t have. Over 70 per cent of properties in Nigeria are owned by either an individual or corporate organisation; not the government. So will you be able to control what you don’t have?”
He added that it was unrealistic for a developer to spend up to N20m or N30m on a building and then the government would tell the developer to collect monthly rent.
“How is he going to cope? And again, the structure that government has; does it allow for monthly rent collection? The answer is no. The collection of government tenement rate is annually,” he said.
