Onalaja urges FG to carry out reforms in housing sector

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8 years ago

The Federal Government has been urged to facilitate the amendment of the Land Use Act and create enabling environment for private developers to assist government in tackling the consistent problems of housing deficit in Nigeria.

Bamidele Onalaja, the Chief Executive Officer of RevolutionPlus Property Development Company, made the appeal recently in Lagos during the official commissioning of the company’s corporate head office in Ikeja, Lagos.

According to Onalaja, the issue of housing deficit in Nigeria dated back to as far as 1957 when the first white paper on housing deficit in Nigeria was released. He maintained that that despite successive administration’s policy to provide solutions to the problem, it keeps growing and has reached a staggering 19 million figure.

“As Nigeria’s population keeps growing, especially urban settlements in terms of births and rural to urban migration, the demand for houses keep growing as well but without a commensurate response from the government at various levels,” he said.

He therefore called on Mr Babatunde Raji Fashola, who is the minister in charge of housing to champion the reform of the Land Use Act and to create an enabling environment for Nigerian families to acquire houses of their own by liberalising the processes obtaining mortgage facilities at government owned mortgage institutions.

He opined that between 1985 to 1993, Gen Ibrahim Babangida initiated a policy called “Housing for all by the year 2000.” According to him, the policy has not yielded much as the houses, if available at all, were beyond the reach of the populace since they were not affordable.

In his remarks at the occasion, the Surveyor General of Lagos State, Mr. Olutomi Sangowanwa commended RevolutionPlus Property Development Company and other private investors in the housing sector for their intervention saying government alone, at any level, “cannot take the land, acquire the land, compensate the people and build the houses” and that that is why the banking sector too have keyed into the private sector driven revolution in the housing sector by providing mortgage facilities.

The RevolutionPlus house, located on Olufunmilayo Okikiolu, off Toyin Street in Ikeja Lagos is a magnificent one story building bought over by the company and reconstructed into a befitting office complex and fully branded in the RevolutionPlus corporate colours.