By Stella Obi
The Federal and state governments have been accused of doing little to address the over 20 million housing challenge confronting the country.
Dr. Victor Onukwugha, President/ Chairman of Council, Association of Housing Corporations of Nigeria (AHCN) said the poor implementation and non execution of public housing programmes both at the Federal and state levels have continued to create problem for the sector.
Speaking on Monday at the occassion to commemorate the World Housing day, Dr. Onukwugha said government is not comitted to affordable housing programmes.
To tackle housing decency in the country, AHCN in the State of the Nation said government needs to give tax rebates and other incentives for developers so as to engage in low income housing .
Onukwugha said, “our governments both at the Federal and state levels have done very little over the years to respond to social housing and address increasing housing deficit.
“Although there is no accurate statistic of Housing shortage in Nigeria, the usual quoted estimated figure has been in the range of about 20 million housing shortages. It is however worrisome that efforts put in place over the years to address these deficits have really yielded notable and anticipated result.
“The poor implementation and non-execution of public housing programmes both at the Federal and state levels based on the overall framework of the housing policy have continued to create problems for the sector.
“Social housing is virtually unattractive to our governments as there are no profound commitments to affordable housing especially at the Federal level.”
He further called for strategic and holistic approach in the efforts towards addressing the country’s housing deficiency, especially now with impact of covid-19 pandemic on the economy.
The association, he therefore said has “designed a programme to change ansbreberse the phenomenon of rural urban migration to urban rural migration by creating our flagship project of agric-village scheme in local governments where we shall be using agriculture to drive housing at local and rural level thereby creating job opportunity for millions of jobless youth across the country..”
