High cost of cement and rising housing deficit

It is clearer now that the higher the price of cement, the less affordable for housing and the more people in need of shelter. But to have a firm grip on cement rate will require more than an executive fiat or a casual appeal to market oligopoly. A serious intervention to assuage the deficit must have a foothold on liberal market and developing modern alternatives to the cement factor.
  
A 2020 report estimated that the housing deficit is well over 17 million, requiring the construction of 700,000 new houses yearly to close the gap. If not, and coupled with the arithmetic rate in population growth, Nigeria is projected to have as much as 22 million housing deficit by 2030. Meanwhile, directly proportional to the progression is the cost of building materials. Cement alone, a critical ingredient, has galloped by about 400 per cent in the last 12 years, to arrive at an average of N5,000 per 50kg today.  
  
Apparently worried by the free-fall of price control and affordability, Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Godwin Emefiele, the other day, charged cement manufacturers to take urgent steps to reduce the price of cement and building materials. Not enraptured by the occasion of the new BUA Cement Sokoto Line 4 and the 11 million tonnes capacity, he said there had been calls from construction companies “urging our cement and steel manufacturers to do something about the skyrocketing prices of these two essential items in the construction industry.”