The incoming President of the Real Estate Developers Association of Nigeria (REDAN) Alhaji Aliyu Oroji Wamakko has called for a robust collaboration between private and public sector to generate accurate housing data for the county.
Jedo made this call yesterday at a workshop jointly organized by the Nigeria Mortgage Refinance Company (NMRC ) and the Centre for Affordable Housing Finance in Africa (CAHF) on housing data to support Nigerian’s affordable housing sector in Abuja.
Jedo who is the Chairman/CEO of Jedo Investment Company stressed that accurate housing data will help both federal and state governments formulate plausible policies towards affordable housing delivery across the nation.
Jedo said the workshop is a nice development, noting that without data, no policy can work.
He said, “The outcome of this strategic workshop on data to support the affordable housing sector will have a great positive impact on us. It is an interface, collaboration between the public and private sector, of which we are on the side of public and private sector, and without us, this data cannot be complete. So with us, the data will be complete and it will bridge the gap in housing financing for affordable housing programme.”
He recalled that the housing data collation process was started by REDAN and CBN but currently has about 14 other organizations, including Federal Ministry of Works And Housing, NMRC, Family Homes Funds, FMBN, GIZ, among others.
“ Some international organizations have come into it; it will serve as a model for Africa on housing development. CAHF has really come in. All this data base is to assist the government on housing policy formulation.”
Asked whether the outcome of the workshop will not go unimplemented, he said that he has no fear that the federal government will jettison the robust efforts and input from all and sundry in getting the data accuracy.
He said, “ I don’t think anyone will throw away data collation because without data, you have no information, if the data is there, you will be able to actualize whatever policy the government is trying to do. I don’t think it will go like the other ones.”
Also speaking NMRC’s MD/CEO Mr. Kehinde Ogundimu said it decided to partner with the Centre for Affordable Housing Finance in Africa (CAHF) to make use of data to generate informed policies that will boost affordable housing delivery in the country.
Ogundimu who spoke to Africanews.com at the sideline of the workshop said that the workshop brought participants from the entire housing industry- from land administration, up to mortgages and refinances to see “how we can get data and manage the data to make an informed decision.”
Ogundimu said that it is high time to begin to build houses that people want and not houses that we want them to buy.
He said, “We need to build houses that people want, not houses that we want people to buy. So we need data to be able to make to make informed decision to the location of the houses, who wants to buy, who wants to sell. So anything that has to do with data is essential.
“The NMRC has been championing the data management as we have mortgage information portal. We have data from every organization. We are just posting it; it’s available for people to query and to make decision. So you can go into the portal ask about development, what are the prices of these houses, which types of houses are there. This helps not only those who wants to build house, it also helps those who wants to buy. And also helps in infrastructure decision.”
Other stakeholders at the event commended the organizers of the workshop, saying it will go along way in making accurate housing data achievable and by extension help the industry grow.
