Housing delivery receives boost as 27 states key into FG’s plan in 2017

Housing deficit may be reduced considerably in 2017 if plans by the Federal government is fully actualised.

Presently, 27 states across the federation are said to be partnering with the federal government by offered land for housing projects.

Although, details of the partnership and the affected states are yet to be made public, but officials confirmed that all things being equal, work will commence at the various site by the beginning of 2017.

Underscoring the seriousness at which the project is being conceived,  Minister of Works, Power and Housing, Mr. Babatunde Fashola, last week hinted that the ministry has commences tender process for 500 contracts that would soon start, saying that the contracts tenders have been considered.

The Minister revealed that government has received land from 27 states as at 24th October 2016 and more are still responding.

Stating further, Fashola said the ministry has completed simple designs of one, two and three-bedroom bungalows for the northern states to respond to the cultural, climatic and land use peculiarities, while it has also completed simple designs of one, two and three bedroom blocks of flats for Southern states also in response to similar peculiarities.

“Government has done some inventory of quantities of materials needed in order to provide investment information for local manufacturers to position to respond and supply in order to create employment and get factories back to work that include building materials, skilled and unskilled labours”,

The materials include 22,288 doors, 27,849 windows, 3,502 water cisterns, 3,502 wash hand basins, 2,830 – kitchen Sinks, 261,299 – Square metres of floor tiles, 178, 680 square metres of wall tiles, 561,119 litres of paint and 342,960 Square metres of roofing materials.

Projected skilled labour, according to Fashola is 413,000 ‘Man days’, while the unskilled workers is projected to be 440,000 ‘Man days’.

“We have identified inputs like doors, windows, tiles, paint, roofing materials that can be made locally and we have resolved to use only made in Nigeria inputs unless there is no local production capacity.

“While our planning and research continues, the above is at least indicative of the kind of attention and dedication we are demanding of our staff and the response we are getting”. Fashola assured.

Going forward in 2017, he said there is plan to build more houses, first to stimulate jobs.

“Thereafter, we plan to assess the affordability and the acceptability of our designs and we plan to industrialize the production of the most affordable and acceptable designs.

“We will then increase supply using private sector as developers while government will then concentrate on strengthening institutions like the Federal Mortgage Bank to deliver on its core mandate of providing mortgages to working class people to own their homes.

“It is my belief that if we can achieve this, the size of our housing deficit will not appear that daunting again, because it will be a system that can respond every year, instead of once in a while, to repeat housing construction, delivery and acquisition”,said the minister, noting however, that the numbers that can then deliver will be defined by the size of available resources and government’s ambition, and not by the absence of a workable plan.