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How states rendered housing corporations redundant —AHCN

It has been alleged that governors in Nigeria have rendered the state housing corporations redundant in the past few years.

The allegation is further supported by the latest report from the Association of Housing Corporation of Nigeria (AHCN), which rated eight years of former President Muhammadu Buhari as abysmal in the area of housing provision.

In his address on the “State of the Nation’s Housing,” during the 2023 World Habitat Day, President of AHCN, Dr Victor Onukwugha, noted that all the state governors and those that have little interest would rather embark on Public Private Partnership (PPP) than using their state housing corporations to execute housing projects.

Bemoaning the story of appalling performance of the states in the area of housing provision, he pointed out that social housing is no longer in the agenda of virtually all the state governors.

In the last one year, the AHCN’s president lamented that most of the housing corporations could not execute any tangible housing project as political activities characterised the first five months of the years while the new governments, both at the federal and the state levels, who would give direction to governance have just settled down.

According to him, there were no records of activities of some of the states’ housing agencies in the last one year.

The latest’s AHCN report also revealed that there were no new housing projects in 21 states in the last one year.

Statutorily, the AHCN boss said “Housing corporations were created as government agencies to execute public housing programme and undertake the development of housing estates by acquiring, developing, holding, managing, selling, leasing or letting any property movable or unmovable in their respective states on behalf of their state governments, based on the formulated housing policy and programmes of each state within the overall framework of the national housing policy.

“This statutory responsibility however is gradually becoming history as majority of these corporations are being neglected and deprived of exercising these roles.”

He decried the situation where most state and federal housing ministries are now duly involved in direct housing construction under the guise of PPP at the detriment of the housing corporations.

He explained that both the federal and the state ministries were principally created for policy formulation while state housing agencies were statutorily saddled with the implementation of government policy of housing provision.

According to him, ministries both at the federal and state levels have no business in direct construction, describing usurpation of the statutory responsibilities of housing agencies in building construction and development by the ministries as 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.

Proffering solutions to the ugly practice, Onukwugha said: “ministry of housing, both at the federal and state level, should concentrate on providing the enabling environment and supervision for the housing agency to fulfill its statutory mandates.

“If the supervising ministry must intervene, it should not be at the expense of relegating the state housing agency to the background.

“Therefore, the Federal Housing Authority (FHA) and state housing agencies should be repositioned to spearhead the provision of social housing.”

The association is, however, hopeful that things will be better under the current administration.

To adopt and run with the theme of this year’s World Habitat Day: Resilient Urban Economies. Cities as Drivers of Growth and Recovery; AHCN boss said the government must wake up from its slumber and empower state housing corporations to get the job done.

According to him, until deliberate attempt is made to address housing challenges of low and medium income group, housing deficit gap will continue to be on the increase.

Onukwugha expressed that the last administration failed to fulfil its promise of providing one million housing annually.

According to him, instead, the administration was only able to deliver only 8,938 in eight years.

He said, “The eight years of the last administration which elapsed in May this year witnessed abysmal performance in housing provision. Out of the one million housing units the administration promised to deliver annually at inception, only 8,938 housing units comprising of 6,068 units in 35 states and 2,870 units in the FCT were delivered in eight years, according to the scorecard presented by the former minister before handing over power to this new administration.

“The houses were executed directly by the then Federal Ministry of Works and Housing.”

“While we frowned on the direct involvement of the ministry in direct construction which was characterised with administrative bottlenecks and over-pricing of completed units, the administration gave no consideration to social housing which, all over the world, is essentially driven by government and seen as the responsibility of government to the governed.

“Efforts to address increasing housing deficit was non-existent both at the federal and state levels,” he said.

He also decried the nature of the country’s mortgage system, describing it as still crawling.

“Our mortgage system is still crawling without notable efforts to address non functionalities of creating mortgages that will help to drive the housing market,” he said.

In the area of rental housing, he solicited the support of the state governments to assist housing corporations to collaborate with AHCN to achieve the desired objectives

He said:”We cannot do this alone without state governments support, especially in the area of land, bank and the support of funding institutions, especially Family Homes Funds Ltd (FHFL), Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria (FMBN) and primary mortgage institutions.

“We are aware that FHFL and FMBN are doing something in this direction, but a strong synergy which should also include building materials manufacturers and NBRRI is required in this direction to make such housing affordable.”

He reiterated call for the establishment and creation of a Special Development Fund under CBN intervention fund for state housing corporations and Federal Housing Authority (FHA) for rental and affordable mass housing provision.

“We wish to reiterate this appeal for a proposed Affordable Housing Development Fund which should only be made available for rental housing and affordable low cost housing scheme, while the state governments should provide landed property and infrastructural facilities through state housing corporations for such construction, as their social responsibility to the people,” he said.

To ensure continuous flow of funds into the rental housing, he said the FMBN, NMRC and Family Homes Funds Limited should be co-opted into the administration of the proposed special fund from the CBN Intervention Fund to service both the demand and supply end of the rental housing with a deliberate government policy that will mandate commercial banks to set aside certain percentage of their funds for lending to low income real estate development at single digit interest rate.

In addition to this, he said that government should create enabling environment for the development and promotion of REITs market to build off-takers base to attract investors and fund to housing and construction sector and in the process stimulate crawling mortgage market thereby creating unhindered access to affordable mortgage as well as exit point for developers who invested in housing.

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