“The heights that great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight, but while their companions slept, they were toiling at night” – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
President Goodluck Jonathan carved a niche for himself last year as the first elected president in the country to lay his score card on the table and challenged anyone to counter what his administration delivered in the first half of his administration. Several months after Mr. President threw the challenge no one has been able to come forward to puncture the statistics he presented before Nigerians.
Apart from the fact that all the ministers were drilled before the Federal Executive Council to justify their continued membership of the committee by presenting their ministries score cards, Mr. President went a step further by directing the ministers to also present their score cards to the national leadership of the Peoples Democratic Party to ensure they are working in tandem with the manifesto of the party.
One of the area the administration of Jonathan has broken new ground is the housing sector and the government has been taking proactive measures to curb the housing deficit in the country. Being one of the major priorities of the administration, the Jonathan team in the housing sector took measures to undertake painstaking study of what it would require to put a roof on the head of every Nigerian.
President said recently that Nigeria needs a minimum of N56 trillion naira to be able to bridge the country’s17 million housing units deficit. This revelation among other things served to accentuate how dire Nigeria’s housing need is.
According to trading economics, Nigeria’s current population growth rate is 2.8 per cent. The implication of this is that we are fighting an uphill task battle to reduce the housing unit and constructed. As more housing units are constructed, an increasing population could erode the accomplishment if Nigeria’s housing programme is not robust enough to outgrow the population growth.
The problem of adequate housing is not peculiar to Nigeria. According to the UN Habitat 30 per cent of the world’s urban population lives in the slums, deplorable conditions where people suffer from one or more of the following basic deficiencies in their housing: lack of access to improved water, lack of access to improved sewage facilities, living in overcrowded conditions. Living in building that are structurally unsound: the same report says that 35 per cent of the world’s rural population lives in unacceptable conditions, overall more than 2 billion people are in desperate need or better housing.
In line with the federal government transformation agenda, the Federal Housing Authority, FHA under the leadership of Arch.Terver Gemade is taking affordable Housing to the door steps of Nigerians.
President Jonathan on assumption of office told Nigerians that one of his cardinal objectives is providing affordable housing to all Nigerians in realisation of the Millennium Development Goals, MDG in our quest to become one of the top 20 economics by the year 2020. Not only that creating the right environment for investment in housing sector would no doubt serve as a lubricant and vehicle to attaining that vision, considering the sectors potential for growth in the country.
Ach. Gemade in adumbrating on the significance of the low housing units in Bwari, posited that “the project which would consist mainly of one, two, three, and four-bed room apartment in high-size structure is aim at saving cost on infrastructure and the service land, and would be delivered through direct construction and Public-Private Partnership, PPP.
Elucidating further on the benefit of the project in Bwari, Gemade said the authority’s new focus on construction of housing for low and medium income earners, looks beyond the pursuit of profit, but a commitment to contributing its quote to the realisation of the housing and job creation components of President Jonathan’s transformation agenda.
As part of taking affordable houses to the door steps of Nigerians, subject to sound mortgage regulations as encapsulated in the federal mortgage bank rules and regulations, Gemade said the F.H.A. had acquired land in 17 states of the federation for housing estates and that consultations were on with Lagos state government on the titling of F.H.A’s land holding in the state.
The Federal Housing Authority had been a major player in the effort to deliver to the nation a modern capital city and that it had delivered no fewer than 15,000 housing units in FCT and beyond as can be seen in the land mark achievement of the F.H.A management team in providing affordable houses in Odukpani- Calaber, Goni-Gora,-Kaduna, Anambra, Benue, Gombe, Oshogbo with equanimity where all the six Geo-political zones benefited on the basis of justice, fairness, equity, geared towards the attainment of a just and an egalitarian society.
Be it as it may, Gemade emphasised that providing housing for low and medium income earners is informed by the need to cater for vulnerable segment of the population. And assisting the President Jonathan administration in combating unemployment and other economic problems facing the down-trodden in our society.
In the final analysis, with all these lofty and revolutionary initiatives, put in place to ameliorate the plight of the less privilege in the society, one is not in doubt that President Jonathan transformation agenda is achieving result at F.H.A.
Abdulfatai Ibrahim write from Abuja