IN the last lap of his Presidency, President Goodluck Jonathan has initiated a policy, which he believes will bridge the gap in the country’s housing needs, with the private sector playing a key role. Already, the Federal Government has secured a $300 million loan from the World Bank for this purpose. The money is to be used to set up the Mortgage Refinance Company, out of which $50 million has been set aside for mortgages to the masses.
Drive through the Third Mainland Bridge in Lagos from the Oworonsoki end, turn right and watch the insanitary and shocking spectacles that are called “houses” at Oko-Baba community, Ebute-Meta, erected on stilts in the lagoon; visit Ijora/Badia, or inspect under the bridges that serve as abodes in the night for the homeless in major cities across the country, then, a striking picture of the dearth of housing becomes too obvious.
In the Abuja Municipal Area Council, a self-contained (single room) apartment is rented for N500,000 per annum. A new tenant is required to make two years payment for such accommodation, whose demand, by far, outstrips that for three- and four-bedroom flats. The situation in Port Harcourt is not dissimilar.
For the records, Nigeria had a housing deficit of about 18 million as of 2012. If at all the $50 million the Federal Government has offered for mortgage were to be well utilised, how far can it go in bridging this gap? It is estimated that 80 per cent of Nigerians live in rented apartments. The Managing Director of the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria, Gimba Ya’u Kumo, once said that N56 trillion would be required to deal with the challenge. Pitiably, our rural dwellers that constitute about 70 per cent of the country’s population are not yet in the picture.
This huge deficit exists because successive administrations have been irresponsible by not seeing housing as a big social challenge that requires the authority of the state to holistically tackle. At the inauguration of the mortgage firm by Jonathan in Abuja three weeks ago, the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, was quick to remind her sceptical national audience that the new scheme would not replicate the ugly memories of the past. Her veiled reference was the contribution of workers to a national housing project, initiated by Lateef Jakande, as Minister of Works and Housing, between 1993 and 1995.
A total of 121,000 houses were planned; but the contributors have neither received houses nor the refund of their money since then. These frustrated depositors have dragged relevant agencies of government to court over the matter, with Jakande as their principal witness. In other climes where government is seen as a continuum, one of the four successive administrations: (Abdulsalami Abubakar, Olusegun Obasanjo, Umaru Yar’Adua and now, Jonathan), would have considered it fit to deliver the houses; or, in the alternative, refund the deposits.
A reassuring rebirth of mass housing project must probe why previous efforts flopped. Very critical is access to land in states and Abuja. The extant statute has vested ownership of land in the state. Over the years, dispensing parcels of land to citizens has become an enduring mechanism for entrenching the politics of patronage and cronyism in government.
Until January 2014, a land applicant paid a non-refundable fee of N100,000 to the Federal Capital Territory Administration, Abuja. Thousands of people are in the queue arising from this, and bereft of hope of being considered. Abuja should know that liberalising the process goes beyond the recent reduction of the fee to N50,000, to making land available to as many applicants as are capable of developing it. The private operators the President is banking on are entrepreneurs driven primarily by the profit motive. Sprawling estates in Abuja, Victoria Garden City and Lekki in Lagos, and other places underscore the fact that the poor are not in their radar.
Also, high bank lending rates, which currently vacillate between 17 and 25 per cent, is stifling investment. Estate developers are not insulated from its wrenching impact. Evidently, most Nigerians live in slums. The high cost of building materials has made it impossible for thousands of the less privileged to own personal houses. A bag of cement, which sold for N600 some years ago, now sells for N1,600, despite government’s recurrent pledges to scale it down through a policy jerk, as a pragmatic way of tackling mass housing.
In the United Kingdom and other Western democracies where human dignity is valued and the welfare of the people assumes primacy in the conduct of government business, social housing is provided to the needy. There are 1.8 million of such people in the UK, waiting to be keyed into this communal grid. It bears repeating that their plight cannot be redeemed by any form of mortgage.
In Nigeria, we have such people aplenty. A well thought-out housing scheme, therefore, should capture this segment of the society.
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