National Assembly supports N500 billion yearly for housing

Experts canvass improved home ownership

Minister of Housing and Urban Development, Musa Dangiwa, yesterday, said that following the ministry’s engagement with the National Assembly leadership, the federal lawmakers had expressed their support for a plan to increase the ministry’s yearly housing budget to a minimum of N500 billion, starting with the 2025 budget cycle.

He disclosed this at the 2024 Conference of Property and Environment Writers Association of Nigeria (PEWAN), themed: “Resolving the financial and regulatory dilemma to achieve renewed hope agenda in housing”, held in Lagos.

Dangiwa said the development would allow government to expand housing projects to cover the remaining 18 states and increase the unit count per state from 250 to, at least, 500, as initially planned.

Dangiwa, who was represented by the Director Press and Public Relations, Federal Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, Salisu Badamasi Haiba, said: “We need to build approximately 550,000 units, yearly, over the next decade to close this gap. This will require about N5.5 trillion yearly.

“We are funding 12 Renewed Hope Estates from the N50 billion 2023 Supplementary Budget. We also have an additional N27.2 billion allocated in the 2024 budget to complete their infrastructure fully, while awaiting 2025 budget to expand the programme to cover more of the remaining states.

“The three Renewed Hope Cities in FCT, Lagos and Kano are all being funded through a PPP that the ministry signed with a consortium of developers for the delivery of 100,000 housing units nationwide. Under this strategy, the developers source land and construction finance, while government creates an enabling environment for them to deliver housing.”

He noted that housing delivery, especially affordable housing, which the nation was in dire need of, required huge financing, adding that at the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, “Estimates show that we will need to build 550,000 housing units yearly to cope with increasing population and address the housing deficit in the country, which some sources have said is over 18 million units.”

According to him, it will require a yearly budget of N5.5 trillion at an average of N10 million per unit. The minister noted that the housing sector’s potential as a driver of economic growth was evident in the job opportunities that the Renewed Hope Cities and Estates Programme had created, saying that at an average of 25 jobs per house, the ongoing projects had directly and indirectly generated over 252,800 jobs for Nigerians, including skilled and unskilled workers.”

Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of UPDC, Mr Odunayo Ojo, in a lecture on: ‘Key problems of affordable housing’ highlighted challenges to affordable housing to include lack of access to land, high cost of building materials, inadequacy of access to finance, high cost of infrastructure taxes and fees.

Earlier, the Chairman of PEWAN, Mrs Okwy lroegbu-Chikezie, noted that Nigeria had become entangled in the twin issues of housing deficit and high vacancy rate in the real estate sector, which appeared as an anathema.