Hon Lukman Saad Olumoh is the lawmaker representing Ajeromi /Ifelodun Constituency 1, at the Lagos State House of Assembly. He is also the House Committee Chairman on Budget and Economic Planning. He talks about several issues concerning lawmaking in the state especially, the issue of tenant/ landlord relationships and how the House is trying to find a common ground that will benefit everybody. Enjoy this interview Edward Ndukwe and Samuel Orji had with him
Tenants are in pain in Lagos, what’s the House of Assembly doing to help reduce their pain and burden, I know the House has been making some amendments concerning this.
I am happy you said the House of Assembly has been up and doing with our responsibility in terms of making laws if you’re aware of what used to be in Lagos State before the law came into existence. I remember vividly that before the law came into existence, before you come in; the landlords will ask you to pay three years or five years rent. I am also aware that some landlords were in the habit of collecting money from 5-7 people just in one apartment. But that law has helped tremendously to checkmate the activities of some of these landlords.
Nobody tells you to pay two years’ rent any longer because you must not pay more than a year’s rent, to the extent that the law has been able to cure that problem. However, law evolves with time and there’s nothing wrong in looking into the laws if there are complaints to continuously protect the interest of Lagosians. Its two ways; when the tenant complains, the landlord also complains because that same law protects the tenant whether a yearly tenant or a monthly tenant. Even if you misbehave and the landlord doesn’t want you in that house, he will have to approach the court and he knows the process of litigation. So it’s two sides of the coin. Some landlords complain too while tenants complain, but there’s always the need for us to update the law.
Has there been any review of this law, especially the issue of the agent and agreement fee which some are even higher than the rent?
I don’t think this agent and agreement fee is recognized by the law. I told you that laws made are not statutes, they evolve and when we see complaints like this, it could be a private member bill that comes to the House based on the complaint by people that could necessitate working on that law. Some landlords are complaining that it’s difficult to eject a tenant just because of the law that protects the tenant because the law is more about protecting the tenant. We can look at the law and see what kind of amendment can be done.
Can you recall any amendments to the law?
What the House is currently doing is working on all our laws and bringing them to terms with the current reality on the ground. I cannot single out any that I will say this is part of it or this is not part of it. Today, we did the second reading on the LASIEC laws. Last week, we deliberated on the local government laws. I am working on something that I want to initiate in the law. A lot of things are involved in this and most of our laws are being rejigged to tally with the current realities.
Any particular one in the landlord and tenant laws being reviewed
You just said something that tenants are complaining about. We need to know what they are complaining about, same with the landlord which will protect the overall interest of everybody. The landlord will tell you for me to build a new house; inflation has caught up with it. If a house costs the landlord ₦10m to put up a new one, where does he get the money from, he gets it from tenants. So after building, how does he recoup the money; it’s from the tenants? You have to look at all these interests and be in the middle so that party A and party B will not feel cheated.
Is it right for the landlord to say I don’t want someone from a certain tribe or religion in my house?
I would not want to talk about who you give or not give your house to. For you to give your house to someone as a landlord, you have to do your background check. I am of Yoruba extraction and I might decide not to give my house to a Yoruba family after doing my background check. I might decide to give it to a Hausa man if he is better than the Yoruba man. I have to ascertain the security first; the cash flow of the person coming to my house; apart from security, where I see that he will not be a problem for me, I will have to ascertain his cash flow. Is it possible that after paying this first rent, he will not be able to continue with the subsequent ones? You also have to look at the general well-being of all the tenants; don’t bring in a troublemaker. Even abroad some landlords will tell you that the facility they have can only take or you can’t bring more than four persons.
If I bring in this person I know that the facility can only carry 10 and the person will bring in 20. I might be obliged not to give out my house. I don’t want to talk about tribe and religion because these are two sensitive matters that have continued to tear us apart just for selfish reasons. We all try to fly this kite where it pays us. You’re interviewing me but you are not a Yoruba man, same with my PA, I have a Hausa person working with me.
It depends on what you want to fly but with rent, it’s always the other way round. I can tell you that there are certain areas in Lagos that a particular tribe will not allow you to own because of the dominance of owning a property. I have seen a marble market in Ifelodun, dominated by one single village from the east. Somebody from another village from the same east tried to establish himself and they refused him. This happened in 2017 because I was still the vice chairman of the revenue committee. Go and do your investigation, all those people selling marble in the Olaniyanu marble market in that place are from one single area but we stood by the man that they should allow him to do his business.
In your plenary session today, you talked about domestic violence. And as the Speaker said, you only talk about solutions, not prevention. What do you think should be done to reduce this issue of domestic violence?
One important key is parenting, if parenting is right; you know you are not supposed to abuse people. We are all brought up by different parents so our upbringings are different and then the community takes ownership of raising children. I was a product of my community raising me and I always say that a soldier from the Ijaw tribe every one of us in our compound respected him. He will look at our report card and God help you if you fail, he will deal with you and your parents will not say anything. Even the holy book said to spare the rod and spoil the child. We have to identify parenting which is the key issue that we are having. We have failed as parents and I say it everywhere.
Secondly, substance abuse is so common now. How do you define what’s violence when you are high and expect we address the issue of our community taking responsibility for the children? Before, I could discipline my child without any issues coming out of it but now, how many of those children can you touch? The holy book talked about this and it’s still relevant, so civilization and technology should not take that culture of community away from us.
Look at this phone, all of us rely on this phone, what do we sell on this phone, things that have no moral values? The Speaker mentioned, that somebody coming out of school and he would like to ride a Mercedes Benz immediately. You send your children to school, she will go to class in the morning, and in the evening she will go and stand by the roadside. You as a parent would not even bother to go and see how your child is doing in school. Unless we come back to see ourselves as one if not substance abuse, domestic violence, and other vices will continue to be on the rise.
We need to consider Lagos is for everyone but there are aborigines that we need to look at. If we must be in this place, we have to go by the norms and the tradition. Go to our streets, most of these children are born on the streets, at least you can see the effect.
Still talking about domestic violence, these days’ men are affected but they can’t cry out. How do we help them to speak out?
You should know that domestic violence does not know gender. Even between husband and wife, sometimes the wife will abuse the husband and the man cannot talk because of tradition. A point in case, where you allow your children to demean their father for no just cause, is also violence against men and so we should speak against what’s bad in the society. I have read where a boy child has been molested, a boy of five years by a lady of 21 years.
We are not talking about the girl child but gender. If you see the way the discussion went on the floor of the House, we were not particularly about any gender. We were concerned about doing the right thing for our children and ourselves.
Does it look right for the lawmakers to sit on the floor of the House and make laws without consulting the people concerned?
Anybody saying that may not understand how laws are made whether it’s a private member bill or executive bill. When I say private or executive bill, whether it’s been sponsored from the floor by a member of the House or it’s being sponsored by the executive. It’s presented at the floor of the House for the first time and then you bring back the same bill the second time, then add and criticize the bill, the leadership of the House will now take it to the relevant committee who will now break it down. Apart from critiquing the bill, we have a public hearing where everyone will make input, professionals and non-professionals will come to make input.
In addition to what we have done, those memoranda and everything is considered before finally a bill is brought to the floor of the House for the final reading. If we are convinced that this is what we want, looking at the stakeholders, then we will vote to pass it into law. After passing it, you send it to the Governor for his assent and if he refuses to assent it and we believe that’s what’s good for the good people of Lagos State, we can override his assent by passing it into law by the majority of the House. The person saying that is ignorant of the fact that there was a public hearing of which he was not aware or the public hearing has been held. Maybe he just saw the lawmakers debating the way we debated today and he felt we have concluded.
We only focus on the federal government when it comes to budget implementation. I have not heard where the LASHA had issues with the executive over budget implementation
I will answer your question this way. LASHA is an independent army of government and we are not under the control of the governor. In Lagos State, the three arms of government don’t collaborate but they work independently. LASHA is autonomous of the executive
To answer your question, when the Governor brings in a budget, we look through it. For instance, the Governor just brought a redrawing of the priority in this year’s budget. We have to look at it and agree with him that we have to prioritize the budget because one, inflation is on the increase. The cost of the project they brought at the beginning is no longer what it is and he has to deliver to Lagosian. The running cost is no longer what it used to be because we know that interest rates have gone up in some cases, the exchange rate has gone up too and there’s a need for us to sit down again and once that’s done we will pass it.
Like now, we did the laying of the reports maybe next sitting we look at the details. If the members are convinced that the request they made is okay, it will be passed and if it is assented, it becomes a law and we do oversight. We operate on committee systems in the House. We have committees that supervise every ministry. House Committee on Budget and Economic Planning and our major duty is to supervise the Ministry of Budget and Economic Planning. We have a committee On Commerce, a Committee on Energy; a Committee on Education is there, a Committee on Culture, Art, and Tourism Is there, a Committee on Special Duty, and a Committee on Judiciary among others. We have over 40 committees and we oversight every aspect of the money we have given to the executive to spend to ensure that Lagosians get what they deserve.
That’s why Lagos is the fifth largest economy in Africa even bigger than some countries. You only mention Nigeria, South Africa, Egypt, and another country before you mention Lagos. You can see for yourself what is happening in Lagos. You have the blue rail; the red line is also about starting. Our airport will soon commence and you can see the way the roads are being fixed especially in my constituency. So we oversight the executive and we do it with all sincerity of purpose.
You discussed the electorate law on the floor of the House. Other states have conducted LG elections; will there be a change in the operation of LASIEC, who is the electoral umpire?
As guaranteed in the constitution, all Houses of Assembly are saddled with the responsibility to make law for the existence of all local governments. Be mindful of the fact that the 1999 constitution we are using is an aberration, which was handed over to us by the military. We are trying to utter them now. That same constitution guarantees that everything that has to do with the formation, organization, finance, and everything about the local government rests with the House of Assembly.
Yes, there’s a Supreme Court judgment that talked about autonomy, yes there’s autonomy because they’re the third tier of government but in the federation, you have the central and the state government. If you’re operating the presidential system of government, the state government gives birth to local government. If you go to the USA where we are copying from, you can decide to create 1000 local governments from your state provided you can sustain them. Here we have a democracy that we are nurturing and so we need to guide everything such that we don’t make mistakes.
However, the law we are making is a LASIEC law for the forthcoming election. Since the Nigerian constitution guarantees that the State House of Assembly has to make law as far as local government is concerned, we are within our duty to make the LASIEC law; which we will use to conduct the next local government elections. That thing is now being committed to the committee and there will be a public hearing where people will make their contributions.
Now that the local governments have autonomy, are you still going to superintend over them?
The Constitution says so. Nobody says the House of Assembly does not have the power to legislate over the local government
But the law the National Assembly is making for the local government has passed a second reading
The National Assembly cannot make laws for the local government. They can only make laws for the local government under their jurisdiction and we are aware that they only make laws for FCT. I want to believe that the law in question is for them to conduct the FCT election, not the local government in Lagos State or any other part of Nigeria.
I saw some grading of some Local governments in Lagos State, where you were graded as overall best. How do you feel about that?
I will tell you that those that did that are mischief makers and I don’t know how they got the data. I don’t know who they spoke to but, it will be an aberration to start to grade the lawmakers. We have experienced lawmakers who are in their 16th year of four terms and we have someone serving his sixth term which is 24 years. So how do you rate someone coming in yesterday above them? I am not saying they don’t have the right to rate us because they said they would stand by their findings, but as for me, they want to cause problems in the House of Assembly. We are 40 united members and an injury to one is an injury to all. As far as I am concerned, every member of this House is performing well in their right and various constituencies.
