In Barcelona, Spain, the authorities are forcing landlords to fill empty houses with occupants or watch them taken by the government as public housing to lower-income tenants.

The city’s housing department has written to 14 companies that collectively own 194 empty apartments, warning that if they fail to find tenants next month, the city will take possession of their properties, and compensate them with half of their value.

The warning also said that the companies could be fined between €90,000 and €900,000 ($103,000 and $1,003,000) according to local media.

In the Catalonia region of the country, a 2016 law empowers the municipalities to take control of properties abandoned for more than two years. The law gave the cities the right to rent out the properties for a period of four to ten years before returning them to the control of the owners.

In 2019, Barcelona approved a legal tool that empowers the city to purchase the properties at half the market price. The aim is to curtail the crisis in the region’s housing sector.

Bloomberg reported that Spain’s dwindling property market is forcing the country to take drastic measures. The empty houses menace is attributed to the country’s 2007 to 2008 financial crisis that depleted every sector of the economy. As the market struggles to bounce back, homeowners are waiting for the market to revive.

Many housing units were repossessed by banks that think of them as assets to be managed rather than essential public resources. Reports said it has resulted in a high rate of empty houses and neglected properties in the city. Adding to the menace, the abandoned homes have become Narcopisos (Narco-flats), where drug dealers and users trade and consume narcotics.

According to Bloomberg, Barcelona has been devising on how to solve the problem for a while. The tools deployed by the city include levying heavy fines for vacant units, while some empty vacation rentals have also been used as emergency housing during the pandemic.

The new approach is quite wider than others previously used. All properties up for potential expropriation belong to owners with multiple with multiple units.

But a house could only be eligible for forced purchase if it has stayed as long as two years without record of utilities use. Occasionally used houses are exempt.

The city housing commissioner, Lucia Martin said the aim is not to pressure landlords into renting their own units.

“We are not here to expropriate. What we want is for apartments to be rented. If the answer is no, we will open the file and they will go to expand the city’s public housing sector,” she told the local newspaper 20 minutos.

The city is seeking stiffer penalties for abandoned houses. The enforcement is seeking to persuade the Catalonian authorities to expand the program by narrowing the time period of forced sale from two years to six months.

But many house owners are voluntarily handing over their houses to the city. Spain’s national bank SAREB, reportedly handed over rights to rent out 256 squatted apartments they own to the city this week. Just so, they could be rented and the drug dealers and users could be pushed away.

In many other countries in the world, the housing situation is opposite of what is obtained in Catalonia. Though there are still empty houses even though the demand is high.

In the capital city of Nigeria, Abuja, there are over 600 abandoned houses rotting away when there is a huge deficit in the country. Nigeria has 22 million housing deficit, and Abuja contributes 1.7 million to that gap.

The situation has been attributed to many factors ranging from corruption to the cost of rent. Acting Managing Director, Abuja Property Development Company (APDC), Lawal Aliyu Magaji told Guardian earlier in the year that lack of an effective tax system among other things has contributed to this.

“If we have a good property tax system where those houses are being taxed, people would not continue to keep houses unoccupied. When the owners are being taxed for houses they built which is not fetching them any profit, they would have a rethink,” he said.

He added that the unoccupied houses were built by those who have no interest in “getting any income from them,” which poses a morality question. In a city where there is a 1.7 million housing deficit, should over 600 houses be unoccupied?

The call to get occupants into Abuja empty houses have been ringing for long, and the Nigerian government’s plan to use a tax regime to effect it seems far-fetched. The Catalonia housing laws therefore, present a model that the federal government can borrow to solve the Abuja unoccupied houses problem.

A suspect has been arrested in Fahim Saleh’s murder. The police said his former personal assistant was arrested early on Friday and would be charged in the killing of the tech guru.

Saleh was found murdered on Tuesday in his apartment in New York, and his body was dismembered. The gruesome incident sparked outrage and concern around the world early this week.

Saleh was popular in Asia and Africa where he pioneered transport motorbike hailing apps that eased commuting. He was the founder and CEO of Gokada, a Lagos based ride-hailing motorbike company, and cofounder of Pathao, Popular in Bangladesh and Nepal.

The police said that money is the motive behind the murder of Saleh. His former personal assistant, Tyrese Devon Haspil, 21, who had a five years work relationship with Saleh was stealing from him. According to detectives, Saleh found out that Haspil has stolen about $90,000 from him.

The officials said text messages between the two showed Saleh accusing his former employee of stealing his money. Saleh didn’t report the matter but gave Haspil a timeline to pay back what he had stolen.

Haspil handles finances and personal matters for Saleh. NYPD Chief of Detectives Rodney Harrison said he was arrested Friday morning in the lobby of another luxury apartment building several blocks away from where Saleh was killed.

“Mr. Haspil was Mr. Saleh’s executive assistant and handled his finances and personal matters, and owed the victim a significant amount of money,” Harrison said on a news briefing Friday afternoon.

Autopsy confirmed that Saleh was killed by multiple stab wounds in the neck and torso. The security footage recovered by the police showed the two struggling at the entrance of the victim’s apartment, where it was believed that Haspil used a Taser on him.

Contrary to what the police believed earlier, that Saleh’s sister who called 911 may have interrupted the murder, new evidence suggests that the murder happened on Monday afternoon. And the murderer must have fled using the apartment’s back door on Tuesday at the sound of Saleh’s sister’s presence, while dissecting the body to cover his crime.

Detectives believe the assailant must have come back to make the death look like a hit from a bad business from Nigeria, Bangladesh or Colombia, where the victim has venture capital.

An official who spoke on anonymity said the killer used a credit card to pay for a car to a Home Depot, on West 23rd Street in Manhattan, and to buy cleaning supplies. He had returned to the crime scene the next day to clean it up when he was interrupted by the visit of the victim’s sister.

Detectives investigating the matter had believed it was a pro job, but changed their belief when they spotted a lot of rookie traces. The surveillance video showed the killer trying to use a vacuum cleaner to wipe out perceived evidence where the taser was used.

He was also discovered to have bought the Taser online with his own credit card in June, and signed for it when it was delivered. He also used one of Saleh’s credit cards to buy balloons for a birthday, said one of the police officers handling the matter.

“The credit card was used to buy balloons, and this and that, because he was with a girl for her birthday. How stupid can you be?” said the officer.

People familiar with their work relationship said Saleh had helped Haspil financially so that he was able to settle his family debts.

Detectives handling the matter said he had worked with Saleh since he was 16, and overtime, gained his trust to manage his personal matters including home chores.

Haspil who graduated from Central High School in Valley Stream, New York, was said to win an award for website design, a skill that possibly drew Saleh to him.

Saleh’s gruesome death has thrown his family and friends and the entire Nigerian tech community into mourning. Everyone has good words for him upon his death, which opposes the suspicion that his murder could have related to a business gone wrong.

“The headlines talk about a crime we still cannot fathom,” Saleh’s family said in a statement after his death. “Fahim is so much more. His brilliant and innovative mind took everyone who was a part of his world on a journey and he made sure never to leave anyone behind.”

Those close to him in Nigeria, Bangladesh and Columbia share his family’s sentiment – The world has lost a good man.

On 16th July, 2020, Nigerians on Twitter lamented the handing over of military checkpoints along the express roads to Nigeria police. It was both hilarious and disheartening to listen to the soulful laments of these young and old Nigerians. It was quite obvious that nobody wanted the police to man our roads and protect the citizens. Somehow, the Nigerian military personnel have won the hearts of many Nigerians.

It may be ironic to realise that Nigerians prefer men with guns to those with batons. Of course, mobile police and SARS officials are usually the police officers that mount roadblocks and they both carry guns. But then, their possession of gun spells doom instead of safety for Nigerians. So, instead of Nigerians rejoicing that the military men are going back to the barracks, they cried out in pain, seeking for their comeback.

One may wonder why Nigerians prefer Nigerian Army, Navy or Airforce to protect travellers on our highways. Well, below are some of the reasons Nigerians on Twitter gave.

• Extortion

It is well known that in Nigeria, police checkpoints are extortion points. Like someone said, if you meet one hundred police checkpoints as you travel, you will be extorted one hundred times. On the contrary, if you meet one hundred military checkpoints, you are likely to be extorted zero times. This is just to say that Nigeria police checkpoints are money making ventures. Increasing these checkpoints is just a way of creating more problems for travellers.

• Assaults and Killings

You hardly hear that a military man shot a civilian during an argument. But is there any week you don’t hear about a police officer killing a driver, a passenger, a passer-by or even another police officer because of N50? Most of the time, if drivers get into heated arguments with these officers, people like me will plead with them to release that money because no one knows what the officers have in mind. One can never tell what it takes to annoy these people to the extent of shooting someone. Worst is that most of these mounted checkpoints are illegal and thus, any officer that commits crime at an illegal checkpoint may disappear without trace. Nigerian police has finally succeeded in making themselves enemies of the people.

• Security

If you are travelling and you meet a military checkpoint, you can comfortably park your car around the area and even doze off because you are sure that your life is in good hands. But trust me, you won’t even dream of doing that at a police checkpoint. To start with, the police can pack up and dismount their roadblocks at any point in time. But the military checks are almost permanent – they don’t pick up random areas to mount their checks.

Another thing about military checkpoints is that they are mounted around areas where hoodlums attack motorists. For instance, the military checkpoints along Enugu-Onitsha expressway were stationed at Ugwu Onyeama and Uguwoba. In the evening, they set up monitoring checks at Mopol junctions. These areas are notorious for armed robbery at any time of the day. However, since these military came, no report of robbery has been recorded along Enugu-Onitsha Expressway. Now, it looks like we are going back to where we were before.

Calls for reformation of the Nigeria Police Force have been ongoing for a long time now. It is quite unfortunate that Nigeria police are giving us the impression that they can keep our roads safe when they know fully well that they cannot do so without the help of these military personnel. However, we have to give them the much support we could to see if they can really do the job. But then, something has to be done to ensure that illegal checkpoints, extortion and assaults by the Nigeria police are eradicated. Nigeria police has to do a lot of work to win back the confidence of Nigerians.