By Mashe Umaru Gwamna
The Minister of Housing and Urban Development, Ahmed Dangiwa, disclosed that 85% of 43 million Nigerian households have low purchasing power to own homes.
He said most Nigeria’s households have less than N1.1m purchasing power per annum.
Dagiwa stated this when he received members of the House of Representatives Committee on Housing and Habitat led by Abdulmumin Jibrin.
The Minister added that 17.3m fall into poverty-income group while 20.2m fall into the low-income group.
He said Nigeria does not only have inadequate housing supply to meet the population growth, but that many of the existing ones were substandard.
According to him, “75% of 31.6 million of the 42 million housing units were substandard.”
He said affordability in social housing is critical to resolving the housing challenges we have in Nigeria .
He emphasized that Nigeria will need about N5.5 trillion annually to build roughly 55,000 housing units every year if the country aspires to close the current housing deficit in the next 10 years.
He added that 97 per cent of land is still unregistered, which means that over $300 billion is still characterised as dead capital, coupled with high construction cost, importation of building materials, inflation, low access to mortgage, among others.
He maintained that if the 97 per cent of land was registered, people could use the land to acquire credit, listing the ongoing renewed hope cities as well as renewed hope estates as some of the ongoing programmes of the ministry.
Also speaking , the Committee Chairman, Abdulmumin Jibrin called for immediate regulatory waivers to facilitate the efficient delivery of housing under the Renew Hope Agenda.
“We will have to support the housing ministry to be able to get certain exemptions, presidential waivers, otherwise they will not be able to move as quickly as possible and as efficiently as they should move”, he added.
While assuring the ministry of their total support to able to increase its budgetary allocation to N500 billion.
He adds: “And let me also say, by that increment, we are not doing them a favour. It is in line with the housing policy thrust of the present administration.”
