HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENTS
4.4 Social Arrangements/Focus groups
The provision of shelter and utilization of resources efficiently towards achieving housing objectives is ultimately the target of any housing initiative. Therefore, it is important to know the social arrangements among householders, and among housing development actors. It is a known fact from studies that all planned housing by the public sector never achieved their planned objectives, since outcomes have become very unpredictable partly due to social arrangements(Aradeon,1978;Mabogunje,1978;2007;Koenisberger,1970;Gyuse,1984;Awotono, 1987).
In most homogeneous communities void of syncretism as a lifestyle (like in the west), the socio-political ideology emanates from a democratic belief system which is entrenched constitutionally and this is Christian in nature (Aradeon, 1983). The single-family house or single-family apartment reflects the one-man-one wife and three children model for living.
Such conception of the house form was translated into colonial territories from where planning regimes have drawn their inspirations (Adeniyi, 1980). It is therefore worthy of note to identify the common social arrangements and focus groups among countries of Africa who have had an experience of colonialism with emphasis on British colonial rule as the case is in Nigeria. The immediate beneficiaries of this transition into syncretism are the working class (emerging
elite). They are the forerunners of the multifaceted-social focus groups the country is faced with in her class struggle (Amuwo, 2009; Melanie Paris, 1998)
D4.1. Cohen. A, (1981, in Melanie Paris,1998: 65) described the elite as “a collectivity of persons who occupy commanding positions in some important sphere of social life, and who share a variety of interest arising from similarities of traning, experience, public duties and way of life…They also seek to perpetuate their status and privileges by socializing and training their children to succeed them…and there is a dialectical relation between power and culture ,the one acting on the other.”
The various movements and consequent evolution of social focus groups in Lagos is traceable to historic political antecedents (circa 1800). This was in relation to the colonialist and the returnee slaves from Cuba and Brazil; they were locally called Aguda or Amaro, meaning
‘those who have been away from home’ (in the Yoruba language of the western Nigeria where Lagos is situated) and their Sierra Leone returnee slaves counterparts called Saro (Vlach, 1984). Lagos, at this point in history comprised of four social groups: The Aguda’s, the Saro’s, the indigenes, and the Europeans (Paris, 1998). The impact of this social divide is reflected in the direct intervention of the British consul in securing land for farming and dwelling for the Aguda’s and the Saro’s from the King of Lagos (King Kosoko). Land acquisition by seizure and allocation to a preferred group actually is traceable to this early act of British intervention in social arrangements through institutionalization of land tenure. The motivation then was industrialization of Europe.
Pugh (1980) identified three stages of motivation in the housing evolution for most democratic societies/countries namely; needs and problems of industrialization, general social needs, and competitive interest of public and private initiatives which marked the development towards national comprehensiveness and coordination in housing policy. Given this trend, the paradigm shift over the years is not just a result of policy changes rather a strong sense of social response to every planned action. While in civil societies of Europe and the West the bureaucrats where the arbiters of justice, equity and distribution of national resources. In Africa, the coalition of a few indigenes who supported and benefited from colonial rule became the elite for whom syncretism became a lifestyle (Rapoport, 2001, Aradeon, 1991).
It is obvious that the elite syncretism (creative synthesis) in Nigeria was borne out of the need to meet the expectation and obligations of European colonial masters. However, as time went by, the elite developed an underlying need to be in touch with their locale and remain popular.
Therefore, an attempt to dispense with neo-democratic dictates of the colonial masters became a leadership quagmire. Since out of such neo-democratic dictates, they often find the comfort to wield their power but have continually failed to uphold the same powers in absolute terms as handed down to them by the colonialist (Baradat, 1997).
It is in the nature of housing that this transference of national power relations becomes a thing of concern especially in the production, distribution, and consumption of housing for which national might is utilized for any emerging economy as Nigeria; and where planned action is expected to bring about successful implementation.
This democratic transition is such that social relevance for the elite transcends the three tier of government power in the newly formed nationalistic entity, called ‘the independent country’.
As is the power divide so is, the demand on home ownership since housing is ‘place specific’;
so is the demand placed upon the elite to own homes at locations of power. Hence, multiple- home ownership (MHO) is not limited to surplus value accumulation; it is also about social relevance, political power, and partaking of the ‘national cake’. Especially, where government might is brought to bear on the distribution and consumption of housing (Daramola, 2007).
The emergence of the nation-state marked a clear political delineation of power. This further heightened the class struggle and gave legitimacy to the issue of multiple-home-ownership (MHO). The tripartite arm of government simply became the fulcrum upon which the middle- income displayed their affluence by multiple-home-ownership. Otherwise, they may become less relevant in terms of affluence and influence among their socio-economic and traditional/cultural settings from which housing derives most of its socio-cultural attributes and behaviours. The remoteness of one’s village of origin creates a greater need to satisfy the political nodes in relation to where perceived national influence exist. Therefore, the village (or hometown), the local government capital, the state capital, and more recently the political capital of the nation state (Abuja) as different from the national commercial hub (Lagos; whose relevance has been discussed earlier), became sources for delineating ones identity among social groups of the middle-income. Consequently, social configurations pre-determine the location of housing for households beyond the numeric data for estimating needs. Multiple- homeownership is not always associated with the derived economic need to accumulate surplus value alone. Rather a need for social relevance succinct to general housing needs plays a vital role in MHO. This is whereby, the average middle-income householder in Lagos strives to own a house in Lagos (as his primary place of abode), in addition to other houses wherever he hails from in the country before housing aspiration can be said to be met. Therefore, social
arrangements truncate housing objectives in realities of production, distribution, and consumption once national framework is the basis for determining housing needs.
This phenomenon takes its origins from the inability of the post-colonial governments to contain the power relations between the seats of power referred to as ‘capitals’ (local, state or national) which used to perform dual functions for commerce and politics. Since this strategy was used during the colonial era to marginalize tradition or to justify nationalism (Paris, 1998).
Examples are the movement of colonial political power from Oyo town to Ibadan in Oyo state, formerly western region during the colonial era and a similar movement from Zungeru to Kaduna in the north; both were due to conflicting power relations between tradition and colonialism. Small auspicious hamlets like Kaduna and Ibadan suddenly became ‘urban’ due to policy shifts. A similar movement in post-colonial Nigeria is the movement of the federal capital from Lagos to Abuja; precipitated after a failed military coup in 1985.
The essence of these citations here is that the identity of a capital; local, state or federal comes with massive physical development and consequently housing delivery for the new sites of government offices and support workforce as well as the commerce of governance which would automatically ensue. Therefore, Public-private partnerships’ in housing delivery is a result of the political arrangements in the citation of governments’ administrative posts largely.
In most cases, enablement in this term is consequent on governments’ policy directives alone and not necessarily the economics of market forces. More so, the size and scale of housing development is politically motivated. By so influencing the realities of spatial use in all ramifications in terms of the design typology, the size of spaces and the conveniences attached.
These architectural attributes fulfill a political agenda rather than the need for housing, thereby negatively influencing the housing outcomes in real terms.
It is from this analysis that the need to formulate an approach for delineating key institutional arrangement as different from the organizational arrangements would begin to emerge as this is relevant to the urban question as well as the housing delivery objectives among partners. The institutions by this literature is representative of these groups; the indigenous (the classes of chiefs, kings and religious arbiters) and those of pre-colonial and post-colonial relevance (the army, police, government ministries etc). These roles frequently interchange in response by households. In most cases, for post-colonial operatives of government to have their way in their housing programmmes, they would need to consult these indigenous institutions to give legitimacy and correct the intent and perceived wrong notions of the people. While in other scenarios, their role is organizational in nature. In Nigeria, institutional roles have latent
organizational influences through social focus groups within the institutions and the social divide from which governance is administered (Aradeon, 2005).
Similarly, the organizations of both the indigenes (market women, traders) and those of public functions (labour unions) with the recent non-government organizations and civil liberties movement and ethnic groups/regional groups have shown remarkable fits in their utilization of their coalition to withstand government based programmes in political affairs/issues (Amuwo,2009). When social focus groups embrace, a government programme it makes for ease of implementation and housing is no different. There is an expanding coalition of social focus groups and this is no longer limited to a selected few among the middle-income. Such expanding profile would always reflect in the housing arrangements that are emerging; it becomes obvious in the nucleated estates that are emerging around the city.
The relevance of these social arrangements is such that it is from here that the government selectively draws an agenda to focus on a particular group in the best interest of its overall objectives. This often includes the dictates of donor agencies like the World Bank and their succinct demands, which may not be as obvious given the limited resources at their disposal.
To assume that the theoretical framework for government policy, which emanates from the World Bank theories, is socially responsive in implementation for a region or sub-region against the above backdrop would be erroneous.
In this phase of competitive interest between private and public initiatives in housing there is definitely going to be the class struggle issues even within specific social focus groups. One of such dilemma was in the distribution of the housing of FESTAC 77 in Lagos. The public sector officials used the lottery system to distribute the housing although with the provision of mortgage for households and the sale price was subsidized (Aradeon, 1982). More recently, the games village in Abuja in 2007 was distributed in the same manner thirty years later (FMHUD, 2000).
It is obvious that the complexity of social arrangement and the need to meet the housing demands and objectives of social focus groups is still a major setback in the housing process.
An attempt to delineate these groups in the light of the housing provided will be adopted, as this will give an indication to the various interests which tend to favour access to particular housing, by so further delineate the inherent arrangements, and define who they are by their choice of housing.
The theoretical framework of most housing process, production, distribution and consumption related issues are dictated by the arrangements among housing development actors/partners and households in terms of their organizational and institutional placement within overall national framework. This type of coalitions reflects the middle-income groups in this study;
they are powerful enough to have their way in the housing process and by so turning their aspirations into effective demand. This research intends in its evaluation to take cognizance of these influences in the selection of its subjects for study among the middle-income group as stated.