Nigeria’s housing crisis

DESPITE the huge housing deficit in the country, no fewer than 24 housing agencies in the states of the federation failed in their responsibility to build houses for low and middle income Nigerians in the last 12 months, a report indicated recently. According to the report, housing agencies in the said states neither built nor completed a single housing unit in the last 12 months.  Going by the latest report by the Association of Housing Corporations of Nigeria (AHCN), the umbrella body for all housing agencies in the country, the 24 states without any impact in the provision of housing units in the last one year were Abia, Adamawa, Akwa Ibom, Bauchi, Bayelsa, Cross River, Ebonyi, Ekiti, Enugu, Gombe, Imo, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Kogi, Kwara, Nasarawa, Ondo, Osun, Oyo, Plateau, Rivers, Sokoto and Zamfara. The report added that the non-performance of these housing agencies negated the estimation that the country needed to build 700,000 houses annually to close its 17 million accommodation deficit in the next 20 years.

Rather disturbingly, the total number of housing units developed by state agencies within the last one year is estimated to be less than 100,000 units. Perturbed by the poor performance, President of the AHCN, Dr. Victor Onukwugha, posited that many of the state governments were not interested in social housing, preferring instead to embark on public private partnerships (PPP) which produced little or no results.  He said, quite rightly in our own view, that governments at the federal and state levels had done very little over the years to respond to social housing and address the increasing housing deficits, adding that the poor implementation and non-execution of public housing programmes both at the federal and state levels based on the overall framework of the national housing policy had continued to create a problem for the sector.

On his part, the Executive Secretary of AHCN, Mr. Toye Eniola, blamed the situation on state governors, whom he accused of usurping the responsibility of housing corporations. By neglecting the housing sector, he argued, governors were encouraging the construction of sub-standard housing units, incessant building collapse, increasing housing deficit, rising unemployment and non-contribution to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). He queried the government’s commitment to leading the crusade to convert opportunities in the housing sector to deliberate and profitable economic ventures.

To be sure, housing corporations were statutorily created to execute public housing programmes 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. But it is not fortuitous that for the most part, they have failed to discharge these responsibilities creditably, or at all. And this is, we believe, largely a product of the country’s poor economy.  Pray, just  how can any corporation build houses in 2021 with cement at almost N4,000 and with the national minimum wage pegged at N30,000? How can people earning this meagre sum, which is not even being paid by many state governments, take out housing loans? How are they expected to pay back when their monthly pay can hardly cover transport expenses alone? The truth is that even if the housing need is so acute, not much can be done by any corporation given the extant economic realities.

To effectively deal with the housing crisis, the government needs to roll out novel methods to revamp the economy. In simple terms, the structure of the economy needs to be addressed. In this regard, the government has a bounden duty to address the question of the monopoly of building materials. As things stand presently, Nigerians have little or no choice with regard to purchasing cement: it is firmly within the grip of a monopoly, with arbitrary increases in price that often lead to anguish and circumscribe plans by long-suffering Nigerians to have a roof over their heads. In case governments at all levels have not realised the point, we state categorically that to achieve the country’s housing dreams, they have to run an economy that produces houses. It is a fact that many, if not most, of the loans taken from mortgage banks end up being written off because of the debtors’ inability to repay them. That being the case, housing corporations cannot but run at a loss all the time.

Although there are housing corporations at federal and state levels, Nigerians are aware that they are just a joke. They exist only in name: their staff go to the office everyday doing exactly nothing. How can they do anything when the economy is not productive? The solution is therefore as clear as the sun: it’s the economy.

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