AS Nigeria marks 62 years of nationhood, experts in the built environment have not stopped to decry the failure of successive governments to provide affordable housing units for the citizens.
Many of the experts, who have expressed concern over the huge housing deficit in the country, lamented that, at 62 years, Nigeria’s housing sector has failed to grow with the population rate.
They also noted that accommodation gap has continued to widen.
Besides, they pointed out that there wasno approved and published master plan, adding that less than 50 per cent housing projects accounted for low and medium income earners capacity to purchase
Project Director, WAP Ltd Rwanda,Harmony Kunu, also stated that available and new alternate building materials technology were not widely published and deployed to developers
According to him, lack of government’s supports with necessary infrastructure and incentives also discouraged mass housing project.
“No formalised and published construction permit approval in place and where some states government do have some sort of approvals, most are wrongly evaluated with respect to cost of securing approvals.
“Only in Nigeria they cost number of houses and number of floors to secure a construction permit for an estate project.
“The global practice is a rate is charged for securing project construction permit and not individual houses and number of floors. Major factor that can also affect affordability,” Project Director, WAP Ltd Rwanda,HarmonyKunu, said.
Looking at the country’s housing market at 62, US-based Social Housing Commentator, KunleFaleti, said that urgency is needed to solve affordable housing crisis with policy.
He stated that professionals have concluded that housing unaffordability has reached a crisis state in Nigeria.
As an affordable housing advocate, he said he strongly believed that a program/initiative such as the low-income housing tax credit (LIHTC) practiced in the United States of America and the introduction of a focused and deliberate social housing policy could increase affordable housing supply.
“Furthermore, considering the impacts of inflation, unemployment and ever increasing interest rates on mortgages, as well as high cost of rental housing markets, we are of the opinion that an aggressive regulatory reform, “housing subsidies” (with cautious optimism) and some type of emergency government assistance are needed,” he said.
He pointed out that the shortage of entry level owner-occupied homes was driven by land use and zoning regulatory barriers on single-family homes.
This, he said presented significant obstacles to real estate developers who would like to build such starter homes.
“The absence of these homes contributes to the housing crisis.
Many builders replace smaller, more affordable single-family homes with larger, more expensive and more profitable homes because there are so many costs to the developer. In addition, the rising land costs, construction costs, government fees and local regulations do not help matters, Faleti said.
Sixty-two year post independence, the US- based expert said the housing market crisis in Nigeria has reached a point where policy intervention is urgently required, noting that demand for housing has outpaced supply.
According to him, real estate developers needed a solution that would make construction more feasible.
He pointed out that inflation, increasing interest rates and unemployment rates have caused home prices to reach historic highs.
In his submission, Former Chairman,Nigerian Institution of Estate Surveyors and Valuers, Lagos branch, Mr Samuel EffiongUkpong, saidthe country has made some progress in infrastructure development and real estate subsector but that such could not be called tremendous.
He said “62 years is a reasonable length of time and when compared with our development rate in both sectors then we have done very poorly.
“For instance, not up to five per cent of the landmass in Nigeria is developed after 62 years.
“What are the additional roads that are constructed annually to add to the stock inherited from the colonial masters after independence till date?
“What are the present states of those inherited roads and infrastructure? Can we point to the companies that operated in the country 20 years or 30 years ago, and state what is their status today for performance indicators?”
“By how much is housing needed annually and by how much is it provided annually? How would anybody assess our maintenance culture to housing and to infrastructure? Is there any alternative to Lagos – Ibadan expressway and why is it taking eternity to complete it?
“The airport that are being built, are they airport when compared to the modern ones of comparative countries or they are airstrips?”
He pointed out that many things such as the nation’s refineries, rolling mills,aluminum plant and power plant, among others have refused to work 62 years after independence.