A nine-year old Chimamanda Isiakpona has been made Managing Director (MD) of Design Protocol (DP), a regional real estate development and construction company, for one day.
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With the theme ‘The Empowered MD by Protocol Design’, the founder of DP who also serves as the Managing Director, Bayo Adalemo, in his remarks at the event, which took place in Lagos recently, said the EmpowerMD Project was initiated because of the need to inspire the coming generations.
“I see children as the future and we need to, at a very young age, capture their talent, document it and also inspire them for the future so that they can do great things more than we have done. We want to inspire and empower Nigerian children by giving them a first-hand experience of leadership and decision-making in a professional setting. This initiative aims to boost their confidence, ignite their ambitions, and encourage them to pursue their goals.
“We aim to provide children with mentorship and guidance that can contribute to their personal and educational development. So today I felt that DP and my team would inspire the young Chimamanda, but we have been completely inspired by her brilliance, focus, confidence and talents. She deigns, she draws and speaks very well. She is a two-time Spelling-B champion. I am so proud of her and believe that with people like her, the future of not just Nigeria but the world would be really bright. I believe she is going to achieve all of her aspirations. I feel that initiatives as this should be done often by organisations so that the gospel can be preached around the entire country where we have young talented people come to showcase their knowledge, drive, desire and also be inspired for the future.
“We appreciate Chimamanda for being our MD for one day and there would be other people just like her as we expect that this initiative would be something that would be carried on into the future. It is important for us to catch them young, nurture, mould and train them so that governance would be a lot easier in the future.”
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On why he chose young Chimamanda, instead of an older candidate or tertiary institution undergraduate, he said: “For every initiative, there is a starting point which is with Chimamanda as she is an extremely talented girl and she has a whole life ahead of her. So I believe what we have done is to give her the ability to visualise and know what the future holds for her. She has a vast array of talents. So the idea is to expose her to possibilities of a great future. So we chose Chimamanda because it is more difficult to mould people of certain age as a tertiary institution age student would have been through life, seen so much and has to unlearn many things already learnt, but when you catch them young, you can still instill values, more confidence and make them dream. She can now take this knowledge that she has gotten from today and everything else she has soaked from this experience and use it to chart her course in life and also inspire other people. She inspired us and we have inspired her and she is going to inspire so many other people on her journey through life.”
On the role Design Protocol plays to improve the real estate industry in Nigeria, Adalemo said: “ A couple of initiatives such as the EmpowerMD Project which I believe the value cannot be measured because when we inspire the younger generation, it goes a very long way to impact the country. As relating to construction and real estate development, I feel that our drive for sustainability is one of the most important things we are pushing into the market and industry. Having truly sustainable solution to real estate development, solutions that are good for the environment. We are annexing the power of disruption using renewable energy to run some of the aspects of the facilities. We are trying as much as possible not to waste any form of energy but convert it and use it. We also use materials that are sustainably sourced, we do a lot of in-house designs and so on.”
Adalemo, however, noted basic challenges in the industry as government policies, inflation, Forex, the degenerating state of the economy, unavailability of mortgages in the market as most people essentially have to bring out a wholesome of money which is not convenient neither is it sustainable.
“Another major problem I have seen in the real estate construction space is the challenge of appropriate technology. We have not improved the way we build houses in over 50 years. I know technology is a slow burner in the real estate or construction industry internationally, but it’s slower here in Nigeria. The way we construct houses generates a lot of waste and is slow, considering the fact that we have such a monumental house deficit – over 20million houses are needed to bridge this gap. The technology and mode of construction in Nigeria is really slow and tedious, unsustainable and extremely wasteful. This is why it is difficult for Nigeria as a country to meet this gap in the housing demand.”
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On what government can do to make things better, he said: “Government should create an enabling environment. On an average construction project, we deal with between 8 and 11 agencies, we pay more to do taxes and this quickly hamper our ability to deliver projects on time and to budget. We are not saying that government should give us free hand as the industry needs to be greatly regulated due to the challenges, which include building collapse, substandard buildings and construction materials, but they need to play the role of enabling the financial services sector to grant the organised real estate industry (The Real Estate Developers Association of Nigeria) access to finance.
“We need a real estate bank in Nigeria, a bank that finances us, that understands our needs, a bank that is set up essentially for us.
“Also on the market side, they need to be able to access loan to buy these homes. The average mortgage in Nigeria is about 25-30 per cent, so every four years you are paying double for your homes. This is why many people still can’t afford a home. Aside giving enabling environment, they need to stay out of the business end of it – as they say ‘government has no business in business’. Also government needs to invest more in education, colleges of technology have to develop appropriate construction technology for Nigeria.
In the US, Europe, North America, they have technologies that suit them. They complete housing projects in two weeks. It’s not possible here because of the kind of technology we use. So we need government to invest more in education where there is more research done on materials, construction techniques and also train the manpower. There is a huge gap in the market today, which is why you see many of our professionals, the tilers, POP experts and others coming from across borders, Benin Republic, Togo and Ghana. Many of them don’t even pay tax. They come here, make the money and take it out of the country. We have young population in Nigeria that government can invest in, training them adequately to take up some of these jobs. Not everybody needs to be in an office or a bank, you can earn very good living by being whatever you are in a construction value chain, which is one of the largest value chains in the world. So we need government to invest in the people, we will do the rest as real estate developers to bridge that gap.”
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