By Olumide T. Agunbiade
|Nigerian writer and Blogger
|
A Nigerian Estate |
IN development
terms, the last few years and first few years of the 20th and 21st
century in the Nigerian Housing Sector have been a total failure. Between 1973
and 2006, the Federal Housing Authority (FHA) built only 30,000 housing
units-nationwide.
Nigeria has a large and ever increasing housing
deficit which stood at approximately 8 million housing units in 1993 and 12-14
million in 2007. A recent estimate puts Nigeria’s housing deficit figure higher
at 16-18 million. “At an average cost of N2.5 million per housing unit, Nigeria
would require N35 trillion to fund a housing deficit of N14 million housing
units.’’ Says Olusegun Adeniji of Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria (FMBN) in
2007.
Several factors had been identified as responsible
for these shortages. According to Mohsin Khoda, a Land Acquisition Manager with
Kings Land Global Investment Company based in Dubai, “supply is limited while
demand is high due to increase in population.’’
In Europe, the expansion of European Union (EU), migrant
workers, increased divorce rate, longer life expectancy and overcrowding of the
major cities have been identified as the reason for the shortage. In contrast,
Nigeria’s urban housing problems manifest in overcrowding, mortgage, slum
housing, poverty and widespread institutional mediocrity.
According to the World Bank’s Doing Business 2008
report, getting a license such as construction permits or approvals in Nigeria
takes 16 procedures which require an average of 465days. These procedures are
complex, expensive and usually encourage illegal construction as well as slum
settlements with its attendant health and environmental issues as visible all
over the country.