Brains and Hammers partners moves to solve 18m housing deficit in Nigeria

The management of Brains and Hammers Limited has announced a “first-of-its-kind” working relationship with the cooperative society of major International Oil Companies (IOCs), particularly Shell and Mobil.

The partnership provides for the delivery of 117 housing units across three hectares of land behind NICON Beach Resort in Eti Osa local government area of Lagos state.

The property, which is named CoopEast Resort Estate, is expected to be fully built and ready for occupation in two years.

Omo Osobase, director of sales for Brains and Hammers, explained the involvement of his company in the project, saying he hopes to deepen the relationship because cooperative is the way forward.

“It is one of the plausible ways to solve or reduce the 18 million housing deficit in Nigeria. That is why we have decided to work in tandem with the vision of the cooperative to provide affordable and decent housing for their members,” he said.

According to Osobase, Brains and Hammers is eager to make a success of the Coopeast Estate to entrench its tradition of excellence in qualitative and affordable housing delivery.

“It is a win-win for all the parties involved in this transaction- the cooperative, the cooperators and us. We are very open to working with cooperatives and members of the public generally.

“It is a partnership that is very promising and we want to use this medium to reach other cooperatives . We are very hopeful that this will lead to a new era of advancement in housing infrastructure across Nigeria.”

Speaking at the event, Hyginus Onuegbu, president of Coopeast (Shell Cooperative), said when they came on board, the management committee decided that Lagos is going to be a place where they will write their name and invest.

“We are not so much in Lagos although we have some investments in Lagos, for example, the Royal Palm estate is one of our projects,” he said.

“We opened an office in Lagos when we decided to invest in the state, then we started scouting for business opportunities and to the glory of God, we came across Brains and Hammers.

“We know about Brains and hammers in Abuja but never knew they were in Lagos, intact, I have slept in one of their Apo estate in Abuja and I loved the ambience and everything.

“So when we saw the opportunity to have a business with them, we had no shaking as we had a 100% believe in them and then of course we went through the commercial discussion with them and came to a conclusion.

“I can tell you that for the first three month of negotiation, the project was oversubscribed, people were interested, we didn’t really believed it was going to be that oversubscribed at that that time and so what we are seeing today is that there’s no place available again for anybody who wants house now.”

Below are photos from the event: