‘Government needs to promote local industries for affordable housing delivery’
To address concerns around the provision of timely, quality and affordable housing for Nigerians through building technology, the federal government has been advised to look inwards and promote local industries.
Festus Adebayo, a lawyer and a foremost advocate for quality and affordable housing development in Nigeria, who gave the advice in Abuja, added that the government should also encourage universities and polytechnics to do research through focused and sustained funding, support agencies responsible for research and development and be be less dependent on importation of building materials.
Private sector operators are ready and willing to deliver housing to home-seeking Nigerians but are not succeeding because they are handicapped one way or another. Adebayo notes that all that these operators need is government intervention, advising that government should create the enabling environment for private sector investors.
“Government must make huge investment in infrastructure. More than half of all of the houses in Nigeria are said to be substandard – either built out of compliance with building codes or illegally built on someone else’s land, or both. This must be formalised somehow”, he said.
For the country to surmount the challenges in its housing which borders mainly on high cost of funds, Adebayo advised further that the government must key into the Nigerian Housing Finance Programme, create a rental housing association model for providing affordable homes, make the federal mortgage Bank (FMBN) a supply-oriented rather than demand-oriented institution; create a national urban regeneration, and allow state governments access to nationally-owned land.
Though the rest of the world is going green with energy efficiency being part of housing design, Adebayo says Nigeria is not yet ripe for green housing, explaining that “before you can go green, you must first have the standard brick and mortar”.
Green technology, according to him, could be a medium term plan. “To achieve this, however, government must invest heavily in infrastructure, ensuring stable electricity, functional sewage/sewer system, available water supply nationwide, less dependence on energy from oil and gas”, he advised.
He said that there must be public awareness and advocacy programs to sensitize citizens, adding that new homes to be built henceforth should embrace solar energy technology.
Adebayo whose company, Fesadeb Communications, organizes the annual Abuja Housing Show coming up in the next few weeks with the theme, ‘Solving Africa’s Housing Challenge Through Innovative Financing and Infrastructure Solutions’ said the choice of the was focused and deliberate.
“Over the years, Abuja Housing Show has transited from local, to regional and now international. For Nigeria to be competitive with developing nations in Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America, it needs to improve its housing – total supply, housing quality, and housing affordability – which grossly lags behind other sectors of the Nigerian economy relative to these countries which it aspires to reach”, he said
The show, according to him, is the country’s top bridge builder in terms of bringing together an array of diverse interest groups from same industry, under one roof. “We have been able to achieve this by encouraging and promoting strategic partnerships across the board”, he enthused.
CHUKA UROKO