Nigeria At 60: Former FHA MD, Gemade Reviews Nigeria Housing Sector, Gives Reasons For Policy Failures

The former Managing Director of Federal Housing Authority (FHA), Arc. Terver Gemade has among other things blamed the failures of Nigeria’s housing policies on policy summersaults, short tenures and the lack of political will to continue ongoing projects and policies by successive regimes.
Speaking to AfricaHousingNews on the event of Nigeria’s 60th independence anniversary, Gemade said that in order to properly access the performance of Nigeria housing sector at 60, one would need to take an overview of the past housing programs for the past 60 years.
Starting off from 1960, he mentioned that the period has indeed witnessed quite a lot of activities in the housing sector. He spoke about the country’s national development plans with focus on the housing sector.
‘’We had the first National Development Plan of 1962 – 1968 when Nigeria established state owned housing corporation, and it was for the provision of urban infrastructure and industrial estates in three key areas: Lagos in South west, Port-Harcourt in Southeast and Kaduna in the north. That was primarily the achievement of that development plan.
‘’The second National Development Plan from 1970 to 1974 saw the establishment of National Council on Housing and the creation of Federal Housing Authority in charge of housing Nigerians and the establishment of National Housing Program to construct about 59,000 housing projects. That was when the Staff Housing Loans Board was established.
‘’The third National Development Plan from 1975 to 1980 saw activities of federal government direct intervention in housing when about 220,000 dwelling units was proposed. 50,000 units in Lagos then 8,000 units in each of the then 19 states. By the end, only 15% of the projection was achieved. That was when the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development and Environment was created in 1975 for initiating good housing policies. That also led to the establishment of committee on standardization on housing types and policies in 1975. There was also an anti-inflation task force in 1976. There was also a Rental Panel in 1976, and then the Land Use Panel in 1977. The Nigeria building society was also converted to Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria (FMBN) in 1976 with a special capital base of just about 20million, then increased to about 150million later on in 1979,’’ he recounted.
Moving further to the second civilian administration from 1979 to 1983, he said that during this period there was an elaborate national housing program in 1980 based on the concept of affordability and citizens’ participation.
‘’Because of the variation in geographical locations, citizens participation was very relevant, and so the target groups then were the low and middle income earners. Then about 40,000 dwelling units were proposed annually. 2,000 units each in Lagos and Abuja. In the other states, about 80% was meant for low income earners. Out of the 40,000 dwelling units that was proposed, only about 32,000 units were delivered, barely about 20% of the total annual projections.
‘’Then the national housing program of 1994 to 1996 with a proposal of about 121,000 housing units to enhance resource mobilization and to establish a sustainable housing delivery system then. A total 21,617 housing units of various categories spread in 55 sites. Unfortunately only about 1,800 housing units were completed as at 1999 which was just about 8% of the projections,’’ he said.
After this, he mentioned the special intervention in 1996 which was the Gwarimpa project. This project, he said, was not part of the national housing program. For the intervention, 5,000 housing units were proposed which were completed in 2014.
Based on his assessment, what Nigeria has achieved so far is a far cry from what was proposed for the housing sector.
‘’If you look at the total achievement of the national housing programs from 1960 till date, you can only boast of the completed housing units to be about 48,000 units, which to me is very marginal. The optimal performance has not been achieved but quite a lot of activities were carried out unlike the practical aspect of housing itself. So you can see that not much was achieved. For me, in terms of percentage, it is just about 30% achievement so far.’’
Although, he stated that there has been some efforts in other areas like private developers, military and para-military post service cooperative housing schemes, state housing corporations and individual efforts.
Gemade remarked regrettably that there has been a lot of challenges affecting the delivery of mass affordable housing for all in Nigeria.
‘’In the national housing policy of 1991, the set target was about 8million housing units for the year 2000. And by the year 2000 this was not achieved. It was also proposed that 700 housing units per annum would be developed from 2000 to date. That also hasn’t been delivered. One can see that consciously, we haven’t been able to perform very well in the housing sector.
‘’The government white paper of 2002 recommended the implementation of programs of constructing about 40,000 housing units per annum nationwide, with at least 1,000 units in each state. That again has just been left in policy and not in practice.
According to him, these policies could not be sustained due to policy summersault.
‘’The major factor militating against the success of housing delivery in Nigeria is policy summersault. A government comes up and make policies that are very innovative but sooner or later you discover that the policies are derailed along the line. More focus are given to other areas of the economy at the expense of housing which is supposed to be a great contributor to the GDP.
‘’I also think that the duration of governance for each administration has been too short for some of these policies to be meaningfully achieved. This short tenure sometimes make politicians to divert attention to seeking second terms instead of focusing on developmental projects. And leaders are always unable to sustain ongoing policies,’’ he said.
For him, the imperative now is how to deliver affordable housing on a sustainable basis in an unprecedented scale to effectively deplete the housing deficit that we have today.
At 60, the need for that, he said, cannot be overemphasized. While wishing Nigeria a happy anniversary, he called on the relevant public and private stakeholders to come together and fashion out a way to provide mass affordable housing for all who need it in Nigeria.