… Residents, stakeholders seek govt’s help as community marks 40th anniversary
By Perpetua Egesimba
Some stakeholders have drawn the attention of the federal government to the decaying state of Festac Town, Lagos. This is coming on the sidelines of a chain of events to mark the community’s 40th anniversary, which included discussions on the challenges of managing the area.
At a recent forum, former federal commissioner for works and housing, Alhaji Lateef Femi Okunnu, notable environmentalists, and Yusfond Consulting, among others, challenged the federal and Lagos State governments to do something fast to save Festac Town.
During a symposium organised by Yusfond Consulting in Festac Town to mark the birth of the community, Okunnu, who was in government from May 1967 to December 1974, narrated how the estate came to be in the 1970s and how it became one of the best estates in Africa, but regretted that it had fallen from grace to grass.
He recalled how Nigeria agreed to host the All Africa Festival of Arts and Culture (FESTAC) after the civil war and how the military administration in power organised the big event not just for Africa but for black people all over the world to come together and showcase their culture.
He noted that the estate was a beauty in those days, which used to compare with its counterparts in North Africa. But now, it has been left to rot due to non-maintenance.
Okunnu said, “Festac Town today saddens a good number of us who saw how it started; it saddens me to see how, all over the country, roads, which were constructed in our time about 40 to 50 years ago, have all deteriorated. There is no maintenance culture; government doesn’t know what it means to maintain structures like Festac Town, just as it does not know how to maintain roads in the country.
“From my time till now, there has been very little maintenance not to mention reconstruction or rehabilitation of the existing infrastructure.”
He argued that it was the responsibility of the state government to maintain Festac Town just like the Federal Housing Authority was doing in those day as the area belonged to the state; he also disclosing that the federal government obtained the certificate of occupancy in respect of the area from Lagos State government during Gen. Ibrahim Babangida’s administration; it was the Lagos State government that gave the C of O while the federal government was just a tenant.
He pointed out that, from inception, the estate was planned not purely to house people, adding that, under the Constitution, housing was a state government’s responsibility rather than that of the federal government. He contended that it was the responsibility of the state government to provide housing for the people.
“As the federal commissioner in my days, even though we had emergency powers, which included taking over some functions of the state government, we still resisted building houses all over the country.
“What I adapted in my time was creating an atmosphere for housing finance to help finance housing programmes. I am proud today to say that the Federal Mortgage Bank was my idea and that was the major role of the federal government, to help finance housing projects. So, the issue of housing is the responsibility of the state government because it owns the land,” he said.
Okunnu, therefore, advised government at all levels to rise up to their responsibilities of maintaining Festac Town just as he advised residents of the community to do their part in ensuring its maintenance.
Acting president, National Youth Council of Nigeria, and the project coordinator of Yusfond Consulting, Yussuf Tunji Kelani, while speaking on the challenges of facility management, recalled that it was now 40 years since Festac Town was opened for residential purposes.
He, therefore, said that the question now was what had happened between 1977 and 2017, since it was obvious that the entire infrastructure – roads, buildings, drainage – in the estate was dilapidated and poorly maintained.
“We feel it is important that we open up discussions; we need to talk about that so that the residents of the estate will actually understand the things that they need to do to protect their environment.
“The roads are breaking; the walls of the buildings are falling off and the trees are being cut down. There are no environment-friendly activities in the estate as we speak, and so many of the roads are abandoned. We just have to find a way out; we need to find a way of calling the attention of government and mounting pressure on them to ensure that they do the needful.
“Festac Town has an underground electricity cable, sewage system different from the drainage system, which is very big and wide. But what we now have is a different thing entirely; people have begun to break into the drainage and sewage systems; some very powerful people have erected structures on some of those systems. And now, whenever it rains, water does not readily find its way out; that is why we have flooding and stagnant water everywhere in Festac now, which can cause serious health challenges,” he said.
President, Festac Town Residents’ Association, Mr. Sola Fakorede, regretted that both the federal and state governments had left things to deteriorate: “Our drainage and sewage systems have completely collapsed. These cannot be revived by the local or state governments; it is only the federal government that can do that because of the lots of money involved in carrying out the repair works.”
Fakorede said part of the degradation was caused by the residents hence the reason for the roundtable discussion to educate them, especially on refuse disposal.
“Some deliberately dump refuse in the drainage. We have on our own part tried to prosecute people to prevent them from giving us environmental challenges.
“In almost every block of flats, which has 12 flats, you may have about 16 boreholes. This is dangerous. If at all people want to provide water for themselves, two boreholes are enough for 12 flats; every other person can connect to the two.
“But in a close, you see about 40 to 45 boreholes. This is dangerous and can have environmental effects. If government had provided water for the residents, there wouldn’t be need for this. But because the area lacks water, everybody is becoming a government to themselves.”
He regretted that noise and environmental pollution would continue to thrive in the estate, if residents were not educated and as long as government abandoned its responsibility of rehabilitating the estate.