Hello nairalanders, I hope this met you well. In my last thread, I believe I was able to make it understandably clear that affordable housing is a birthright of every Nigerian which none should be deprived of. We shouldn’t have a roof over our head solely based on our economic status. Let me further use this opportunity to briefly highlight the importance of having a collective concern over the provision of affordable low income housing for every citizenry.

It is no longer news that access to housing strongly supports economic growth and poverty reduction. This is basically because amongst other things, housing construction constitutes an engine for both employment and industrial growth.

Housing plays a requisite role in the political, social and more importantly economic dialogue in most societies. Housing has been known to be a major component of creating stable and healthy communities and it is often the largest single category of house hold expense.

Socially, substandard housing contributes to childhood health problems like stunted growth, viral infections, asthma and other various health problems, and those sometimes lead to expensive hospitalization. Again, poorly-housed children in these situations are significantly more likely to have behavioral problems.

In Nigeria today, the gap between the rich and the poor is growing extensively wider as the time ticks and it’s obvious nobody seem to care. Housing deficit will continue to increase with the rich buying the much available lands in choice areas and as such limiting chances of the middle/low income earners from affording a low cost housing in the developed cities.

For housing to be successful, a Country needs to have a stable macroeconomic environment. Government should inert and enforce strong institutional intervention in terms of favorable policy drafting and implementation and roll out policies to expand and diversify market-rate housing credit. Housing should be placed in cadres of Ministry of Finance, CBN and others where these institutions are run by experts in the field.

Nigeria, having a volatile economy; what we need in policy making are housing specialists who have the basic knowledge and competence and not just political figures who do not understand by any means, the role of housing in an economy. It shouldn’t matter which geopolitical zones the leadership emanate from, the first criteria should be the deliverables as it concerns the sector.