Affordable housing: Expert advises government to provide right policies
NAN-H-16
Housing
By Uche Bibilari
Abuja, Jan. 22, 2017 (NAN) Mr Festus Adebayo, Chief Executive Officer and Coordinator, Abuja Housing Show, has advised the Federal Government to provide right policies and political will to achieve affordable housing in the country.
Adebayo gave this advice in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Sunday.
He explained that when the government have the political will at the federal and state levels things would work; adding that when things work houses and jobs would be available.
He noted that the major problem facing the country was lack of adequate policy to drive the housing sector and lack of right policy for mortgage system to thrive.
“The problem with the country is the issue of the right policy, if the government have the right policy in the area of housing finance the issue of affordable housing will not be a problem.
“Imagine the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria (FMBN) as at today is living on the 2.5 per cent that they are collecting from National Housing Fund (NHF); there is no government capitalisation.
“So you now ask what happens to those people they have been deducting their salaries since without benefitting.
“So government must have the political will to make it happen, when the government have the political will both at the federal and state levels things will work and when things work houses will be available and jobs will be available,’’ said the expert.
Adebayo said that government should come up with ideas on how to bring down the cost of houses in the country, pointing out that there are many unoccupied buildings especially in Abuja because of their high cost.
He said that all policies on providing affordable housing should not only be on rather it should be seen manifesting.
“We have houses in Abuja that nobody is living in, government should come up with ideal of how to bring down the cost of houses and government should have in its budget for provision of houses,’’ he said.
Adebayo also called on the government to stop building houses but rather work on Public Private Partnership (PPP) on the provision of affordable housing.
He said that the government should create a conducive environment by providing primary infrastructure, make the issue of land and building plans easy to enable Nigerians own a house.
“The major thing the government have to do is to create a conducive environment, I mean they should provide primary infrastructure.
“Make the issue of land to be easy and make their building plans to be easy, so that if I don’t have a house I can easily buy a land and build a house for myself,’’ said Adebayo. (NAN)
UU/MST
Edited by Muhammad Suleiman Tola