The President of Association of Housing Corporations of Nigeria (AHCN), Dr Victor Onukwugha, has described the usurpation of the responsibilities of state housing agencies by the state ministries as purely an “unnecessary duplication of duty.”
This, according to him, will in the long run cause distraction, needless rivalry, unfair competition and sheer wastages and repetition of efforts and resources.
According to him, incessant building collapse, improper planning of cities, charlatanism, usage of fake building materials, among others, were some of the consequences of distraction arising from this usurpation and participation of ministry in direct construction.
To correct this anomaly, he urged that the housing ministry to strictly reduce its activities to policy formulation and monitor its statutory parastatals to ensure policy compliance and accomplishment.
“In summary, the ministry of housing both at the federal and state levels should concentrate on providing an enabling environment and supervision for the housing agency to fulfill its statutory mandates rather than engaging in direct housing construction.
“Federal Housing Authority (FHA) should be empowered to reproduce mass housing of old like that of FESTAC in Lagos across the country with support from the ministry,” he said.
According to him, time and situation have changed and that stakeholders cannot afford to be doing things the way they were doing it in the past and expect to get results that will solve emerging challenges.
”It is time therefore to work together as stakeholders to holistically tackle our housing problems. Housing sector has potentials that can be tapped for driving our economic recovery if only we choose to get our act together to tackle the housing deficit and affordability challenge. It is time to deviate from just talking without matching it with action,” he said.
He urged stakeholders in the sector to embrace partnership options to help one another with strong advocacy group to influence decisions at all levels of policy formulation and implementation.
He pointed out that one critical area that had been neglected over the years was the provision of organised rental housing which, according to him, ought to have taken care of those who were unable to afford outright purchase.
He said that AHCN is focusing in this area by collaborating with the Family Homes Funds Ltd to kick-start a pilot scheme of the rental housing initiative which would take off shortly.
He said: “This rental initiative will be taken to all state capitals to help mitigate the pressure of housing challenges in our cities. We are therefore soliciting for the support of state governments to assist their state housing corporations to collaborate with the Association in all states of the federation to achieve the desired objectives.
“Apart from the above rental housing, we are also embarking on creation of Agric-Villages and Farm Settlement where agriculture shall be used to drive housing at the local and rural level in all local governments thereby creating job opportunities for millions of jobless youths across the country.”
This, he said, explained why sustainable and continuous flow of housing finance is highly needed and necessary for the sustenance of housing initiatives by both public and private housing agencies.
“There is no doubt that state housing agencies have potential to meet the housing needs of the people but this cannot be achieved without the support of the state governments. It is therefore important that governments should engage and support their Federal and State Housing Agencies to make those corporations more relevant to their statutory responsibilities in ensuring housing availability and affordability across Nigeria,” the AHCN boss said.
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