NREH: We would like to congratulate you on your professorship. We know you run an NGO known as Ideal Habitat. Why did you start ideal habitat and what progress have you made so far?

PROF NUBI: The vision and inspiration to start ideal habitat is upon a deep reflection on the way we live our lives. As far back as 1992, 70% of Lagos state was made up of slums for example University of Lagos was surrounded by places like Iwaya, Ilaje, Makoko, Oworonshoki, Bariga ,Ketu, Agboyi, Owodo,Mile12 and these are big settlements in the waterfront of Lagos. All over the world the water fronts used to be a prime location, but unfortunately we mess up our own waterfront, we have slums dominating ours. So it’s a re-orientation that we can recreate our environment, we can regenerate it, we can redefine our lives, our people can live in a first world community, our people can live in an ideal habitat.

We can make our habitat ideal. If in 1977 Nigerians can build a festival town called Festac which was built in the early seventies, then we don’t really have an excuse for Bariga and Makoko that sprung up in the eighties. It is not as if we don’t have a working knowledge of town planning. Since we could come up with Festac and satellite town in the seventies then something really went wrong. It is out of that concern that ideal habitat was born. I drive through these slums every day. I presently have my church in the worst part of Oworonshoki and I see these terrible sights daily so it’s like I am in a human laboratory and I have the burden that the lives of these people can be better, they can live in an ideal habitat, they can clean the slums and make great things come out of it.

We have seen a lot of slums in many parts of the world become great cities today. So that’s actually the vision and inspiration behind Ideal Habitat, and it is scriptural, Isaiah 58v12 says “People among you would rebuild the waste places, they would be repairers of the breaches and streets to dwell in, and they will lay a new foundation.” So it is people amongst us not foreigners that will rebuild our waste places. So that’s the preoccupation of Ideal Habitat, which is regeneration. We work with the people to turn these slums into a beautiful environment. Read the full text here.... http://www.nigeriarealestatehub.com/exclusive-interview-with-real-estate-icon-prof-timothy-nubi.html