THEORITICAL AND CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK 3.1Global Nature of HDS
3.4.3 Delineating Partnerships
(Sengupta, 2006). In Nigeria, most state governments are beginning to adapt PPP for housing delivery. It is in this direction, which this research intends to evaluate the contributions towards achieving housing objectives as another paradigm shift in the housing delivery systems by critically utilizing Lagos as the case study. Part of the framework for this study is based on the current power relation in governance and the need to delineate the social arrangements of both institutions and organizations succinct to HDS (Payne, 1999).
like Nigeria; where weak legislations regulates omnibus spatial design and allocation of resources.
That the “state’ remains a critical mass in the understanding of housing delivery systems is an understatement and the evolution of any given state as Nigeria has a large part to play in its power relations and consequently the housing delivery systems among actors. Since the lifestyle which influences the city will be traceable to these sources namely; social relations among stakeholders, power relations between the private sector and the public sector partners, the need for the private sector to accumulate surplus value and the general class conflicts among social focus groups (Aradeon,2000;Adeniyi,1980;Zunino,2006).
Largely, the Lagos colony is as a separate entity in the national arrangement of Nigeria in its growth and social relations from colonial era until date as a mega-city. The dichotomy between the national government and Lagos is traceable to the power relations issues. Unfortunately, it is evident that, the status of Lagos would remain an independent entity whose peculiarities for stakeholders’ participation may never succumb to general theories given its historic conditions and evolution. In understanding the concept of partnership, it would be needful to trace partnership typology in the following subsections as observed.
3.4.3.1 Private Participation/Partnerships
The concept of private participation was first challenged theoretical by the Marxist theory in its attempt to explain social relations and the disadvantage for the state to create platforms for the private sector to capitalize upon and create surplus value at the expense of the less fortunate (Pugh,1980). The argument is that, such platforms create social imbalance and makes the rich richer and the poor more vulnerable and continues in the cycle of poverty (Olatubara, 2003;
Griffin, Angela, 2001; Florida, 2000; Cohen, 2006).
In relation to the housing debate, it is a known fact that housing is the most basic and largest investment of the average household in their entire lifetime (Ojo, 2007; Okpala, 1978).
Therefore, various levels of private participation require delineation for any given PPP framework. In Nigeria the context of private participation is strictly for two categories of actors namely; the private developer (for profit business concerns) and the social developer (not-for profit housing delivery concern). Unfortunately, only a strict document exist which highlights the criteria/guidelines for private participation in housing delivery (FMHUD, 2008).
Fundamental to the requirement for private participation in government PPP programmmes is the proof of funds and planning layout/architectural design for the proposed housing estate.
Usually, the housing estate derives its layout-typology from similar government planned layouts of the past, with higher density of households than the colonial era and a more compact neighbourhood, which optimizes the landed area. Unfortunately, such minimalist requirement is inimical to achieving planned objectives for housing. The common experience is that, the companies who apply and are eventually successful in securing government allocated land do so with the intent to obtain the title deed in anticipation of sourcing funds. Most times, they end up as speculators of the land they have tacitly acquired from government and never achieve the planned housing; and by so negate the essence of equitable distribution of the scarce resource (land) but enjoy the removal of constraints by government for access to land and tenure.
Therefore, private participation simply becomes a lucrative enterprise whereby private organizations focus on the private sectors ability to provide proof of financing to government.
This is done irrespective of the lopsided equity that may emanate from such participation or they out rightly renege on their contractual commitments to government without consequences of revocation of ‘title’ and/or criminal prosecution for misrepresentation. This method of operation by the private sector has been successful in various adaptations as seen in other commercial ventures of government (such as oil and gas, telecoms and general privatization of Government Corporation).
The utilization of this method of private participation in housing is yet to yield the anticipated results in Nigeria due to the reasons mentioned above. Even though there are documentary evidences of its success elsewhere in the world, such as Asian countries facing similar housing deficit and delivery issues (Sengupta, 2006; Sing et al, 2006; Ronald, 2004; Zrudlo,1978). It is based upon this outside success stories that this research intends to examine the contributions and constraints in Nigeria within Lagos as a case study. On the contrary, a few are opinionated that Public-Private Partnership is an emerging concept and has not succeeded in housing, as it should have for various reasons (Melpezzi, 1990). One of this reasons is the dependence of PPP on a national policy framework, against a backdrop of project specific settings which relies on regional economics and this remains a complex mixture of influences and elements which are interwoven and intricate (Akomolede,1990; Aradeon,1983; Awotona,1990;
Balchin,1979;Bouer,1974). It is hoped that the improvements in social capital (Angela, 2000), of specific societies and their needs will improve the adaptability of PPP principles as they
emerge and are utilized more widely in housing delivery. Since the equality of partners understanding of PPP process is essential to its success (Shaokai and Yan,2007).
One major adaptation of private participation is in public procurement. The British government has found this method more efficient. The private participant recovers cost and profit from the public by the government granting rights over a period, rather than perpetual lifetime rights.
The queries that emanate are the process of selection of the private participant and the quality procurement. In the light of these queries, public procurement by the private participant were found to reduce the burden from government by her focusing on developing more appropriate policies (Spackman, 2002).
3.4.3.2 Privatization in construction/infrastructure developments
Similarly, the concept of privatization is yet another variation of private participation; often used to improve efficiency and in the development of infrastructure (Shaokai, Yan, 2007;
Akitoye, 2002; Matrimort, Pouyet, 2006). The concentration for privatization within this framework remains a funding issue rather than that of performance. Since, the context of performance is from the perspective of funding and the need to increase efficiency. The terms of reference for efficiency here, is often that of returns, cost recovery and its implicit performance factors’ which may not be equitable in various other contexts but dimmed beneficial to the evaluators who decide what is to be privatized and to whom should the access of short-long term or perpetual operator rights be granted?
The applicability in housing of privatization may not be in the strict sense of enterprise as above. In Nigeria, an adaptation was in the monetization of public service housing of the Federal Republic of Nigeria through direct sale to existing public service residents and other interests that are able to bid and win (The Guardian, 2007). By this process, government was able to relinquish its rights for a period of ninety-nine years (by way of a title deed), to all buyers of government housing within the sale period which was set and managed by the Presidential Committee for Sale of Government Property under the auspices of the supervising Ministry of Housing and Urban Development.
These properties included all colonial housing, postcolonial staff quarters, newly development government housing in all states of the Nigerian Federation. This sale afforded several affluent groups within the middle class and upper income social focus groups to purchase directly through bank loans (commercial and mortgage).At some point of sale, there are occurrences of tacit arrangements between government employees who were householders’ residing in these
houses and affluent business men who could afford to pay government reserved prices. Since, householders/residents had the offer of first refusal; and so could go into financial settlement deals with these businesspersons from the private sector, that would pay off the householder a percentage of the reserved prices for granting access to purchase through their identity as beneficiaries of that civil service social focus group.
For instance, the average income earner who is on grade level 10 and 13 of the federal government salary scale according to Mabogunje(2007),would earn about N480,000.00(four hundred and eighty thousand naira only)per annum. It was based on this middle-income bracket that the federal government housing nationwide (of which 70%, of that housing stock was in Lagos) was sold to mostly serving government employees. Even though, government realized most of its projected returns upon the sale, it calls to question the morality behind such applicability of this approach to housing especially among the middle-income group that this research is focusing upon. It is evident that by their salary, they cannot afford to pay for those houses, yet the government policy was to privatize its rights and dispose of its liabilities to maintain and reap the accrued surplus value yet dismantling the very structure of social welfare upon which the entire institutional arrangements have rested in over fifty years.
The stakeholders’ partnership is yet another key mode of partnership in housing. It is a direct attempt to re-invent the partnership concept and was used in Ibadan (south-west Nigeria in Oyo state), but was not successful (Ogu, 2000).The high point is the identification of stakeholders among actors. This in itself negates the fundamental issue of “equity” since common to stakeholders is their funding ability. This is in an economy where the average worker who forms the realistic basis for effective demand of housing lives below one dollar a day. It is simply futile to seek stakeholders from among them who would fit the framework for any known target-cost housing. Often times the stakeholders are favoured elites, friends of government officials or potential agitators against government that must be ‘settled’ to avoid a government-sectarian clash. In reality, stakeholders are often conscription of government rather than a true representation of society and tend towards a selective notion of professionals in AEC, contractors and property developers. This is in total exclusion of diversity groups and households’ implicitly. It is the economic value and power that planned housing brings to its beneficiary that makes housing a perpetual need for all and a potential source for accumulating surplus value (Ungerson, Karu, 1980; Castells, 1997; Daramola, 2007; Pugh, 1980; Sharma, 1994).
Delineating stakeholders is difficult in a post-colonial nation-state. This is because the variability associated with stakeholders’ alignments and coalitions, which emanates from beneficiary standpoint, dictates the outcomes of planned intentions rather than socio-economic profiling derived from income classification used as the basis for allocation of housing to stakeholders. Therefore, the inherent ideological proposition often arrived at by stakeholders as observed, is the need to strengthen coalitions; this occurs among households, actors/partners, and experts towards achieving an improved equitable access and distribution of housing. In reality, this is not the case as the institutionalized stakeholders’ economic classification as a template for national housing instills inherent struggles that overburden the institutional and organizational framework in allocating access and distribution of housing. The use of allocation and the associated criterion in the national housing framework in Nigeria makes the framework subject to the whims of the allocator in this case institutions in collaboration with their cronies in social organizations that largely benefit from multiple home ownership of every housing programme rather than the real households in need. By using this same template for PPP, it negates the needed capitalist democratic process required to optimize inputs and derive benefits based on needs criterion. Since, it is in the nature of PPP that partners ascertain the basis for equity prior to initiating the partnership, by so achieving the Marxist approach yet infusing the needed morality as control to the success of such partnerships.
3.4.3.3 Characteristics of partnerships
It is evident from the exploratory analysis in this section that partnership is a sociological phenomenon with economic implications and can only occur in the context of an offer and acceptance by at least two entities (Matrimort, Pouyet, 2006; Angel, 2000). Like any common economic transaction, the essence of partnerships’ is better understood and defined from an evaluation of its attributes (Shaokai, Yan, 2007) as follows;
i). Partnerships are equity based coalitions and require social structures to exist.
ii).They are agents of crystallization in that, they utilize users potentials to create effective demand at their levels, rather than above them and so proffers solutions that emanate from within the existing constraints among real and existential actors (including users and stakeholder).
iii).Partnership is centrifugal in that, it harnesses actors’ effective potential and focuses it towards some form of convergence for contextual use. By so, partnerships’ instills convergence of objectives and goals among actors/partners.
iv).Partnerships’ are essential socially; for regulating surplus value accumulation at the expense of the vulnerable. Since partnerships in a social setting allows some reprieve and
reasonableness among actors’ actions in pursuit of surplus value by injecting into enterprise a moral sense to profitability.
3.4.3.4 Merits and Demerits of Partnerships
i).Partnerships removes inequities in society by creating generalized platforms for the participation of the private sector; however, in the event of poor clarity in definition, it may lead to lopsided and sectarian distribution of resources and consequently compound the problems of inequity it intended to remove. Therefore, there is always the need for government to design the characteristics and quality attributes of the project once partnership become an option (Matrimort, Pouyet, 2006).
ii).Partnerships utilizes the potential participation of stakeholders to create solutions that are realistic to the level of effective demand. However, a poorly defined concept for partnerships leads to proliferation of solutions among stakeholders once such solutions are not well articulated and are not of a given standard across board (Okpala, 1978; Onibokun, 1978;
Payne, 1999; Zrudlo, 1978; Akomolede, 1990; Aradeon, 2007).
iii).Partnerships enables a focused approach to solving the problem in question. Since the need for convergence and sequencing of stakeholders’ anticipated goals and objectives are important to successful partnerships. However, the monotony that may emanate from such convergence could negatively affect the entire housing goal/objectives (Kemeny, Lowe, 1998; Keivani, Werna, 2001; Gidman, et. al, 1995).
iv).Partnerships enables government to regulate and intervene directly in the accumulation of surplus value by the private sector. However, since they can tailor their proposals for government approval before participation; there is the tendency to do just that, and get away with misrepresentation or lopsided views that would make government accept such convincing and well-presented yet lopsided proposals with clandestine intents. By so, a government discharges its partnership’s obligation in direct conflict with the ‘spirit’ of the ‘thrust’ of the set out goal/objectives (Jones, Pisa, 2000).
v).Other merits and demerits include the spread of risk and its reduction; the corollary to this merit is the risk-averse attitude of government and over-monetization of private partners risk to the detriment of the housing scheme. More so, the merit brought to bear by the private sector of wide range of skills maybe on corporate brochures and not in the realities of implementation. Issues of Cost that is associated with procurement of skills (and the nature of AEC professionals, which is largely freelance) is frequently promised; but the private partner would rather opt for optimal and efficient use of professional service on contract basis to the detriment of the partnership and project delivery. In addition, the merit associated with claims of private partners capacity to contribute quality and quantity after the standards of global best
practice is often vague and never tied to any assessment template in reality. Since new approach by the private sector is often never sustainable in design and the elements of the housing product (Payne, 1999; Jones, Mittin, 1999). One of the risks associated with partnerships is a change in policy and political interference (Gidman, 1995; Batley, 1996).