The Association of Housing Corporation of Nigeria, AHCN has rated rated eight years of President Muhammadu Buhari as abysmal in the area of housing provision.
The Association is however hopeful that things will be better under the current administration.
AHCN President, Dr. Victor Onukwugha gave the verdict in his State of the Nation’s Housing address on the occasion of 2023 World Habitat Day.
Onukwugha said the last administration had failed to fulfil its promise of providing one million housing annually.
He said, instead the administration was only able to deliver only 8,938 in eight years.
He also said the state governments did not fair any better.
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He said, “The eight years of the last administration which elapsed in May this year witnessed abysmal performance in housing provision. Out of the one million housing units the administration promised to deliver annually at inception, only 8,938 housing units comprising of 6,068 units in 35 states and 2,870 units in the FCT were delivered in eight years according to the scorecard presented by the former Minister before handing over power to this new administration. The houses were executed directly by the then Federal Ministry of Works and Housing.
” While we frowned at the direct involvement of the Ministry in direct construction which was characterized with administrative bottlenecks and over pricing of completed units, the administration gave no consideration to social housing which, all over the world, is essentially driven by government and seen as the responsibility of government to the governed.
“Efforts to address increasing housing deficit was non-existent both at the federal and state levels..”
He went further, “At the state level, it is the same story of appalling performance with little or no responses to the provision of affordable housing in virtually all the states within the last one year.
Social housing is no longer in the agenda of virtually all the state governors and those that have little interest would rather embarked on Public Private Partnership than using their state housing corporations to execute their housing projects. “
He explained that States have abandoned the Housing Corporations
“Statutorily, Housing Corporations were created as government agencies to execute public housing programme and undertake the development of housing estates by acquiring, developing, holding, managing, selling, leasing or letting any property movable or unmovable in their respective states on behalf of their state governments based on the formulated housing policy and programmes of each state within the overall framework of the national housing policy.
This statutory responsibility however is gradually becoming history as majority of these corporations are being neglected and deprived of exercising these roles.
“Most of these housing corporations could not execute any tangible housing project this year as the political activities characterised the first five months of the years while the new governments both in the federal and the state levels that would give direction to governance are just settling down,” he said.
AHCN boss also knock the country’s mortgage system. which he said is still crawling.
According to him “Our mortgage system is still crawling without notable efforts to address non functionalities of creating mortgages that will help to drive the housing market.
The lingering and ranging controversy over the accurate statistic of housing shortage in Nigeria in the last three years were yet to be resolved though the current Minister, Arc. Ahmed Musa Dangiwa has initiated pragmatic steps to resolving the issue. “
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