The Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Mr Babatunde Fashola, yesterday in Lagos called for law and order which, he noted, were the most important ingredients to have a city that works for everyone.
Fashola made the call while speaking on the theme: “A City that Works’’ at the Opening of the 2019 Annual Conference of the Nigerian Institution of Estate Surveyors and Valuers (NIESV) in Lagos.
He said that planning and regulation of construction and their distribution were important to achieving development in cities as disorderliness affected distribution of land and houses.
He called on the NIESV to come up with “a predictable national land valuation database’’ to assist government to plan better as according to him, several houses were unoccupied in the nation.
He faulted the housing deficit figure of 17 million due to unsubstantiated data being repeated and revalidated by various groups.
Declaring the conference open, Fashola said: “No city or community will function to our expectations if those cities do not subscribe to law and order.
“Can this body (NIESV) in its closing do a valuation of how many houses are empty and unoccupied in Nigeria? So we can ascertain how long they have been empty and what can be done to make them habitable to be occupied,’’ he said.
He said that law and order should be obeyed by Nigerians and adopted as a religion to reduce road accidents.
Fashola told journalists that recent records collated by the FRSC showed that more than 50 per cent of accidents, crashes and deaths on highways were caused by speeding.
He said 59 per cent of the vehicles involved in those crashes were commercial vehicles.
“The data also showed that the accidents that are attributable to bad roads are 0.55 per cent, less than one per cent,’’ he said.
He called for training of commercial drivers, observance of speed limits, certifying drivers, marking lanes and adherence to road safety rules to reduce crashes.