The Nation Newspaper

Tag: housing challenge

  • Way out of Nigeria’s housing challenge

    Way out of Nigeria’s housing challenge

    SIR: Housing is the second most essential basic need of man, after food. The impact of housing on health, welfare and output of man is profound. But the challenge of housing in Nigeria has been endemic. Unavailability of serviced plots that are ready for housing development, lack of necessary basic infrastructures that will facilitate smooth development, or a good title that will enhance the marketability of the land, especially after one might have developed or build houses on it are some of the factors inhibiting housing development in Nigeria.

    Finance is the major impediment to housing provision. No matter the standard and scope of work you want to do, housing is capital intensive. You need quite a lot of money to accomplish it.

    To compound the challenge of finance is the absence of efficient, comprehensive and organized mortgage finance system that would have granted easy access to housing. Central Bank of Nigeria initiative in collaboration with the World Bank in setting up the Nigeria Mortgage Refinance Company Plc (NRMC) is expected to boost mortgage financing and home ownership schemes in the country, but it is yet to yield appreciable outcomes. Someday, I hope that the generality of our people would be able to access mortgage facilities.

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    Going forward, housing sector must be properly regulated and its activities coordinated to address low quality of housing development and absence of mass and affordable housing. There should be regulations. We must checkmate infiltration of the sector by land speculators and non-professionals. There is need to identify professional real estate developers just as it is being done in other climes such as United Arab Emirates, America and United Kingdom.  There is also the need to address the challenge of ineffective housing finance, in as much as it would be impossible to segregate finance from housing. Failure to do these is dangerous to the sector and would continue to pose a challenge to housing in Nigeria.

    Government must strengthen its legal and regulatory framework for mortgages, including property rights, land registration, and foreclosure procedures to enable a virile and robust mortgage system. Clear and unambiguous property rights, fast land registration processes, and well-defined foreclosure procedures can give lenders and borrowers better security, perhaps leading to additional mortgage lending.

    The Land Use Act is another hindrance to housing development. In the interest of Nigeria and housing in Nigeria, we need to review the Land Use Act. That is why the Nigerian Institution of Estate Surveyors and Valuers have been calling for a review of the Act, or its removal from the Constitution.

    • ESV Oluronke Mary Ajayi, Lagos.
  • Confronting the housing challenge

    Confronting the housing challenge

    Sir: Housing is one of the most important needs of man, but unfortunately, housing remains a pressing challenge in Nigeria, with access to affordable shelter remaining out of reach for millions, particularly in the face of population growth and rapid urbanization. Mostly affected are Nigerians in the middle and low income categories.

    The challenges in housing could be categorized under three major areas. The first challenge has to do with availability of serviced and titled plots or land for housing development. You can only provide housing on land. Yes land is everywhere, but not ready for development. The lands you see lack the basic facilities that will make the land available or suitable for development. They lack the much-needed official certification or title that will make such land or property built on it marketable. This is a major impediment to housing provision.

    Finance is another impediment. It is a major challenge because housing is capital intensive; no matter the standard or scope of the project, you need quite a lot of money to accomplish it. We lack organized housing finance system in Nigeria. Mortgage financing is highly insufficient and inefficient.

    Another challenge is expertise and technology. Housing involves construction and development and sometimes, the type of skills required are not readily available, particularly when you want to go into mass production. We don’t have the capacity, technology and system that can throw up a lot of housing at a time. We still rely so much on the traditional way of mortal bricks and it takes the normal time it will take even when the population is growing at a much higher rate that it will take to meet up with what is required of housing.

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    These challenges points toward the absence of planning. Housing has received very little attention from successive administrations, unlike other sectors, such as health and aviation. The nation’s housing deficit according to industry experts is about 28 million, with about N5 trillion and 2.7 million housing units annually needed to bridge the growing housing gap over a period of ten years.

    Successive administrations since independence have struggled with the housing issue, with little or insignificant success. Going forward, government should make housing its utmost priority, and allow the professionals, particularly Estate Surveyors and Valuers to manage the sector. Most of the people who have administered housing in Nigeria know very little about housing, and this is not good for the sector.

    Policies should also be put in place to make building materials affordable to the less affluent members of the society who constitute the larger percentage of the population and who are mostly affected by the housing deficit.

    •ESV Ugbene Chisom Vvonne, Lagos.

  • 1,600 professionals compete in housing challenge

    1,600 professionals compete in housing challenge

    About 1,600 designers, architects, engineers from over 100 countries applied to compete in the International Organisations for Migration’s (IOM) housing challenge.

    The challenge is aimed at supporting the government to increase the current production rate of housing construction with the private sector.

    The architectural experts developed 250 different design proposals for low cost and innovative housing in the country.

    Chief of Mission IOM Nigeria, Laurent De Boeck  stated this yesterday in Abuja at a press conference organised to officially announce winners of the inaugural housing design competition titled, ‘Home after crisis’.

    He said the 2023 ‘Home after crisis ‘ design competition is funded by the Nigerian Humanitarian Fund (NHF) and about a quarter of the applicants are Nigerians.

    He said: “IOM Nigeria is actively working to overcome the shelter emergency with a durable housing strategy. The objective is to move beyond merely providing housing units and embrace the concept of providing a home.

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    “The 2023 ‘Home After Crisis’ design competition, funded by the Nigerian Humanitarian Fund (NHF), is part of this effort. It brought together 1,600 designers, architects and engineers from across 100 countries. I am very happy to say that almost a quarter of them were Nigerians. Those architect experts have developed 250 design proposals for low-cost and innovative housing.

    “The housing competition targets the housing challenges linked to Nigeria’s rapidly growing population. They aim to provide access to affordable housing, built with the goal of delivering climate-proof housing with local materials. The housing competition paves the way to engage the world in addressing these challenges. They provide a route towards integrating development programmes with the Humanitarian response.”

    He said IOM has always worked on providing shelters for Nigerians especially those displaced by conflict.

    He said the provision of shelter is in different phases, started with the provision of shelters in camp and graduated to transitional housing and the final phase which is part of the ‘Home after crisis’ idea is to provide permanent housing of Displaced Persons in the country and also reduce Nigeria’s 23 million housing deficit.

    Programmes Manager Shelter and Non-food Items (NFI) Maiduguri IOM, Davies Okoko, said IOM has so far provided about 9000 people in the Northeast states of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa with transitional houses, thereby taking them away from shelters and camps and providing them with that they can comfortably call theirs.