Last Monday, a disconcerting information came through media reports about housing deficit of Nigeria. The Minister of Housing, Land and Urban Development, Ms Amal Pepple, during the inaugural meeting of the Steering Committee on Restructuring and Commercialisation of the Federal Housing Authority, FHA, said that the country has a deficit of 17 million. While scoring the agency low for its crass failure over the past decades to meet up with its responsibility, the minister was quoted as saying that, “the FHA built only 37,000 houses across the country since its inception about 40 years ago. This is an average of less than 1,000 houses per annum and currently, the housing deficit in Nigeria is estimated at 17 million. This rather unimpressive performance can be attributed to the myriad of challenges faced by the agency”, she said.
Nigerian population currently stands at 167million. Out of this number, 17million is estimated to be existing without where to put their heads. Even at that, we do not know whether this number include those living in the rural areas or it is just limited to the people living in our ever expanding cosmopolitan cities across the country. That is why house census is said to be underway.
But further scrutiny of the situation with all its socio-economic implications raises even greater alarm. For example, the United Nations has estimated that Nigeria’s population would hit 289 million by 2050, a slight difference from the projection of the United States Census Bureau. According to the US Census Bureau, Nigeria’s population will hit 264 million mark same year – 37 years away from now – thus making Nigeria rank 8th most populous country in the world. Without a corresponding development, there is everything to worry about this development because we are country of warped national projection or planning.
As a parastatal under the Federal Ministry of Lands, Housing and Urban Development, FHA was established in 1973 and saddled with the responsibility of preparing and executing a National Housing Programme for the country. But as has been acknowledged by the minister, it has failed to deliver on its mandate. The agency’s staff have been accused of criminal neglect of their duties. There are cases of poor revenue generation as a result of bad corporate governance, debts, poor funding, among others. Their subsidiary, FHA Homes and Savings Limited performs the function of Primary Mortgage Institution. The PMI handles savings and mortgage loan accounts for customers who indicate interest to own personal houses.
But there are other issues of obsolete Land Use Act currently in operation, poor personal income, high cost of building materials, policy inconsistencies, poor administration, corruption among several factors that militate against affordable houses for Nigerians. Even private developers have been expressing their difficulties in navigating through this web of challenges.
We support the recommendations for the restructuring of FHA which is long overdue. The present administration must work out policy consistency, effective supervision, funding and legal framework if it must realise its housing policy. Also, it is not enough to dish out generalised accusation against agency staff like FHA; we demand that activities of the agency be probed so as to fish out and punish those who may be found to have sabotaged government’s objectives.