How High Cost of Building Materials Renders Many Homeless

The high cost of building materials has been identified as one of the major reasons for the high cost of houses in the country.
Africanhousingnews.com in this report examines how the high cost of building materials has prevented many from becoming home owners.
High cost of building materials in Nigeria has prevented many Nigerians from becoming home owners, necessitating the clamour for price reduction.
Manufacturers of building materials have often linked high cost of operation as the reason for the high cost of the building materials. It will not be out of the way to say that the effort of the federal and state governments to reduce the near 20 million housing deficit in Africa’s largest economy is partly due to high cost of building materials.
The increase in the prices of cement and other construction materials in the country has made many to abandon their housing construction projects. The increase has also led to low patronage of houses built by real estate developers and contractors.
For instance, price of cement said to be a major component of building materials ranges from N2,500 – N2,800 per bag, a price, analyst said is not affordable by the majority of Nigerians.
But dealers and producers of cement have attributed the high price of to the devaluation of the Naira, inflation and increase in foreign exchange.
Apart from this, cement companies’ said their inability to get gas to power their plants was grossly responsible for the current cost of producing cement in the country.
It was further gathered from officials of the cement manufacturing companies that there is no way the cement companies can entertain price reduction below what they are giving out now because of high cost of production.
It was gathered that one of the major manufacturers, Dangote, currently spends close to N1 billion everyday on power plants, even as most of the spare parts needed for the repair of its machinery are imported at very high exchange rate.
Iron rods which are some of the important components of building construction, being an important element of reinforcing cement concrete, is another expensive construction material that must be looked into.
Proffering solutions, Mr Bode Adedeji, the 19th president of the Nigeria Institute of Estate Surveyors and Valuers (NIESV) advised the federal government to summon the political will required for rigorous implementation of all the policies and programmes on development of the housing sector.
According to him, only a comprehensive and well-formulated government policy that addresses all options, including alternatives to cement, can bring relief.