The Association of Housing Corporations of Nigeria (AHCN) has lamented that state governments should be blamed for the housing deficits in the country due to their failure to initiate and execute housing projects running to years.
The President/Chairman of Council, AHCN, Dr. Victor Onukwugha said this on Monday in Abuja while presenting the State of the Nation’s housing Address as part of activities marking the World Habitat Day 2020.
According to him, marking the World Habitat Day was of mixed feelings for many stakeholders in the housing sector and that for him, it is a day full of emotions watching helplessly the most vulnerable of the people living under unhygienic environment with overcrowding and slums settlement while many are without shelter.
“As we are all aware, a day like this is set aside to reflect on the state of our towns and cities, and on the basic right of all to adequate shelter. Ironically, the theme of this year World Habitat Day 2020 is “Housing For All: A Better Urban Future, and the Global Observance”. It is an opportunity for us as a nation to reassess our activities and remind us that we all have great roles, power and the responsibility to shape the future of our cities and towns to impact positively on the housing needs of our people.
“It is no longer news that in the recent past, housing challenges in Nigeria seem to have defied all solutions. It is also not a controversy that various housing policies put in place to address these challenges have virtually failed to resolve the myriad of problems facing the sector.
“The effects of these challenges are manifested in increasing housing shortage and acute problem of housing availability, accessibility and affordability especially in our urban centres. These problems were further compounded with the nation’s recent economic recession. While we were crawling out of the economic recession with the hope of finding lasting solutions to the nation’s housing challenges, the entire world was jolted by the outbreak of Covid19 which resulted in global pandemic,” Onukwugha said.
According to him, there is no doubt that opportunities abound in the construction and housing sector and home ownership still remains and constitutes the priority and major need of the people, but that, past efforts as a nation to position housing as veritable tools for economic growth and empowerment with these opportunities left much to be desired.
He said that the states governments under their state housing and property corporations, state housing and development authorities; and state investments and properties development/authorities have failed to drastically reduce the housing deficit in the country with abandoned projects or projects that were launched but not executed.
“It is a shame that any state government can go for one year without initiating any housing project let alone going for two years and we have some that have not initiated any housing projects for last 10 years and more,” he said.
He however listed Borno, Delta, Edo, Katsina, Niger, Ogun and Lagos states among other as those that have initiated projects, and ongoing projects.
He said, “the poor implementation and non-execution of public housing programmes both at the federal and state levels based on the overall framework of the housing policy have continued to create problem for the sector. Social housing is virtually unattractive to our governments as there are no profound commitments to affordable housing especially at the federal level.
“Land accessibility and availability are cumbersome with high cost of titling and documentation couple with slow processing timeline which discourages investment into the sector. Slum settlements are springing up in our major cities without notable government’s plan of resettlement or redevelopment.”
He lamented that the local building materials sector is facing a major setback and there is no commitment to enhance development activities and researches of local building materials.
He added that the sector is majorly dependent on the use of foreign components and importation of materials at the expense of local production, while local manufacturers are struggling to exist amidst notable apathy of the general public to make use of their end products.
On way forward, the AHCN boss said that while they commend the Nigeria Economic Sustainability Plan (NESP) to build 300,000 housing units annually to mitigate the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic, and for the sustainability plan to succeed, the involvement of the state housing corporations is certainly inevitable to achieve the targeted 300,000 housing units.
He said that ministries both at the federal and state levels have no business in direct construction and that usurpation of the statutory responsibilities of housing agency in housing construction and development for state governments by the ministries is purely an unnecessary duplication of duty which will in the long run cause distraction, needless rivalry, unfair competition and sheer wastages and repetition of efforts and resources.
“Incessant building collapse, improper planning of our cities, charlatanism, usage of fake building materials among others are some of the consequences of distraction arising from this usurpation and participation of ministry in direct construction.
“The housing ministries should strictly reduce its activities to policy formulation and monitor her statutory parastatals to ensure policy compliance and accomplishment. In summary, the Ministry of Housing both at the federal and state level should concentrate on providing the enabling environment and supervision for the housing agency to fulfil its statutory mandates.
“Federal and State housing agencies have potential to meet the housing needs of the people but this cannot be achieved without the support of the governments. Therefore, FHA and state housing agencies should be repositioned to spearhead the provision of social housing,” Onukwugha said.
He also said that a major challenge affecting past mass housing delivery is political interference which most often affects projects.
He said that there is no continuity of housing programmes and policies by successive governments as each regime usually jettison whatever housing programmes put in place by preceding government no matter how decent and innovative such programme may be.
“This derailment in policies implementation is principally responsible for increasing housing deficit in our nation. Most often, this politically motivated derailment of policies are executed for selfish reason such as settling political cronies.
“There is therefore an urgent need to deviate from this political sentiment and quagmire with departure from the usual practice of discrediting viable policies of past regimes. Our leaders are implored to embrace progressive ideology whether instituted by their government or not irrespective of political affiliation in implementation and execution of viable housing policies and programmes and seek to pursue sustainable delivery of affordable housing on a large scale to reduce housing deficit in the country,” he opined.
Onukwugha added that the council is fashioning out areas of harnessing provision of rental housing on a large scale, which has been neglected for years.
“According to a recent research, it was estimated that over 80 percent of urban dwellers rent their homes from informal landlords. The quality of most of these affordable rental housing is typically poor, with most houses lacking basic services; and tenant’s rights are most times not protected in a majority of these informal contracts executed between landlords and tenants.
“There is hardly any recognized Institution that provides well-structured and formal Rental Housing on a large scale targeted at the medium to low income segment in existence throughout the country.
“This scenario has motivated us to focus more in this area of housing to help reduce the impact of homelessness and to create a formal affordable market for rental housing to drive down exorbitant rents especially in our urban centres and build sustainable choice for the people.
“The plan is to mitigate the hardship of the people by reducing their pressure of seeking for annual or two years rents that are usually demanded by shylock landlords so that they can now be paying on monthly basis,” he said.
Onukwugha said that the council is set to service this segment of the market with development of a minimum of at least 500 units of rental housing in all state capitals in the first phase of the development which will help to alleviate the housing challenges of the people arising from the post COVID-19 which affected most Nigerians.
“Our new rental regime which comes with an option to own shall focus more on direct deduction from the monthly income of the subscribers through their employers to help the masses reduce pressure of up-front annual or sometime two years rents as usually demanded by most landlords. The initiative is fashion out to change the face of rental housing in Nigeria.
“The pilot scheme of the rental housing project is kicking off in six states namely Ogun, Plateau, Imo, Taraba, Bayelsa and Niger with our member housing corporations in those states spearheading the development.
“The Association is collaborating with Family Homes Funds Ltd and other major stakeholders in the housing sector to kick-start this new initiative of affordable housing for the people. Family Homes Funds has delivered over 3700 new homes since its creation in 2018 and has provided over 20,000 jobs and helped over 5,000 families.”
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