Mass housing is our priority — Commissioner

Last year, Governor Nasir El-Rufai had promised to embark on a social housing scheme in his second term in office.  In this interview, Commissioner for Housing and Urban Development FAUSAT IBIKUNLE explains how

So much has been said about the mass housing project which the Government of Malam Nasir El-Rufai is planning to build. When is it taking off and where will the houses be built?

If you will recall at the outset of this second coming of Malam Nasir El-Rufai, as elected Governor of Kaduna State, he did mention the issue of housing as one of the key projects that he is going to embark upon. As a matter of fact, housing is part and parcel of the current Urban Renewal Projects that are going on. So, as a Government, we are going directly into the building of social housing for the less privileged. I’m emphasizing that because we are also partnering with private investors for Public Private Partnership (PPP); many of them are at various levels of completion.  We even have more investors that are indicating interest. So, what we want to do is not in any way disrupting what we are  already doing with the private sector.

Having said that, the aspect of housing that the Government decided to commit itself directly to, which is social housing, has commenced. In this year 2020, there is a provision in the budget for the support of mortgage towards that, and for the building of the houses too. We plan, before the end of this year, to build more than 1,000 units of houses for the less privileged and the low-income earners in the State. So, we have various sites for  these projects. One is in Rigasa in Igabi Local Government, we have another one in Unguwar Tanko in Chikun Local Government, close to Maraban Rido, all within Kaduna.

That of Rigasa, we have completed our procurement processes and we have awarded the contracts, the project has actually commenced. We awarded the contract to about 11 different contractors.  It is located at the Rigasa link road that connects the train station with Mando road.  If you go there now, you will see workers, a lot of activities going on and work has commenced.

We have also awarded contract for the second tranche, which is the building of another 200 units, which is coming up at UnguwarTanko.  So, as at today (March 3^rd), we have committed to more than 400 housing units, out of the 1,000 we promised to deliver before the end of this year.

We are in March, that means three months have gone out of your December deadline. Do you think the timing is still realistic, given that you have just nine months to the end of the year?

It is very realistic because the contract period is just four months for each of the Lots. The ones that have started, they are already working and even this other one, latest by next week, contract award letters would be out.  So, I know it is very realistic. Once the sites are available, we just continue with the contract procurement process of the next stage. We have a site at Millennium City also and that’s the next one we are embarking on.  And we have gone far towards securing places in Zaria and Kafanchan. A lot has gone on between us, Kaduna Geographic Information System (KADGIS) and the various Local Governments. They have identified places and we are trying to get those places properly allocated to us. All these work will be going on simultaneously.

Will the houses be on sale or for let?

We are still working on that, but as a ministry, our own priority is to sell the houses to the low-income group and we already have this mortgage arrangement in place.  So, access to finance shouldn’t be a problem to any of the beneficiaries of the houses. Unless government in its wisdom decides that we can still explore other areas, which in that case we are open to.

 What safeguards are you putting in place, whereby people in the middle class and the rich will not hijack these mass housing scheme which, like you said, is for people at the low-income group?

We already have processes in place and we will be selling to individuals. And we’re dealing with different groups. For example, if we are dealing with civil servants, we will go through their various unions.  Local Government and State Government employees  have various unions and cooperative societies and we do have their records, so we will know these beneficiaries. If we are dealing with organized informal sector, we will deal with them through their various bodies because they will know who the beneficiaries are. We will carefully ensure that the houses go to the right people not   moneybags who will just buy up everything and start reselling or renting. The whole idea is to build a social housing and we intend to implement it that way.

 Is there a linkage between the mass houses that you are building and what the Kaduna State Mortgage and Foreclosure Authority is doing?

No. We are working together because the work of the  Mortgage and Foreclosure Authority is centered around just making sure that this mortgage is available and putting in place all the necessary tools and requirement to ensure that when people are given these mortgages, they have the ability and capability to repay. So, we have to work together, but we are actually producing the houses; that is the difference here. We produce the houses and then also see how we can get our off-takers within our target groups, that is the very low-income earners.

These low-income earners that you are talking about, have you clearly defined them?  The term can be open to various interpretations.

You know that no matter how you define it, there will still be a chunk of Nigerians or individuals who will be left out.  We are looking at this group of people who will ordinarily not even bother to own a house; just because you say is affordable, but to them it is far from being affordable.  So, in any segment at all, we know the group were targeting. We are not going to compromise on quality but at least the houses will be such that they provide the basic needs and they will be decent for human habitation. We have to fulfill our obligation in line with the global goals of ensuring that people live in decent shelter.

Talking about quality, how were the contractors for these projects selected, was it by open or selective tendering?

Actually, because of the issue of time, we got approval to go for selective tendering. It was actually competitive but within a selected group of contractors; most of them are contractors that have been tried in Kaduna before. They have been tried and tested, so we found them okay and we worked with the KADPPA,  that is the Procurement Planning Authority,  to ensure that these contractors do meet up to standard and they will deliver the project according to our laid down rules and guidelines.

You mentioned that mass housing will be built in places like Kaduna, Kafanchan and Zaria. Is the Government just targeting urban centers, don’t you think that rural people also need affordable and good houses?

Yes, they do but you see, first and foremost I told you that even though Government is focused on doing social housing, these houses are not free.  So, we are being realistic to first of all target places where we feel that we will be able to have people who have decent means of livelihood, people who can afford to buy these houses for now.  But that doesn’t mean that we are leaving out all the other areas within the state. You know it’s a continuous thing and we hope that by the time we start this, we can only grow on it and we intend to also continue to work with our various Local Governments and encourage them. This is because Local Governments too do have their own budgets.  We can sit down with them and see what would work with the other Local Governments but not now at the take-off stage. Right now, we are just focusing on these areas where we will be able to at least get this thing going until it becomes sustainable. If you sell houses to people and they pay, Government may even decide to just have a kind of revolving housing fund so that we can continue to replicate them in other places. We are not leaving any part of Kaduna State behind.