25/11/2023
Bitter fact; The government doesn’t owe anyone compensation when they remove illegal structures. ( without a building approval and the building control agencies’ involvement in your building, it is considered illegal)
However, to the best of my knowledge, it is very impossible to give 2 hours’ notice for any demolition, even shanties/ uncompleted structures ,they would never give 2 hours’ notice for demolitions without prior notices, not to talk of fully habitable structures with people living in it🤗
It’s quite unfortunate that this is happening. However, it is very important that we use this as a medium to enlighten ourselves.
I deliberately soft pedalled on building to sell when I began to understand the system. At that point, I felt the whole process of doing all the appropriate things relating to building is stressful, so I decided to do less of buildings but do rightly instead of doing alot wrongly, the truth is a lot of Nigerians, we are so used to easy pizzy that the right things now look stressful to us, alot of people complain that building approval process is stressful & long so they end up proceeding with buildings without obtaining the right approvals, the fact is a lot of beautiful buildings we see in Lagos DO NOT HAVE BUILDING APPROVALS, alot of us have made these mistakes, I also did in the past, so we cannot always blame the government.
Obtaining a building approval will actually save us alot of calamities, as Nigerians we need to start doing the right thing, I do personal building projects for people, I have lost alot of clients just because I insisted they allow us get building approval before commencing their projects, most of them will just want us to jump on their sites immediately after payments, I always end up returning their money if they are impatient, and before I blink, I see someone else doing the projects for them, Some Nigerians actually prefer fast illegal results than being patient to achieve the right thing in Nigeria, but when we go abroad, we respect ourselves and do the right thing.
The government is not always the problem. Let’s begin to do the right thing, even when no one is watching.
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