The federal government has launched a 10-year National housing strategy blueprint to ensure the availability of quality housing for all Nigerians.
Minister of Works and Housing, Mr. Babatunde Raji Fashola, who launched the document, which was put together by the FMDQ Group Plc, said the blueprint’s implementation would address the financial challenges facing the housing sector.
Fashola, who noted that Friday was his last day in office, however, for the umpteen time, denied that the country is battling with a 17 million housing deficit.
He said the figure could not be relied upon because, according to him, it did not emanate from verifiable data, stating that the figure being branded about emanated from his ministry in 2012.
To this end, he declared that the statistics from the National Population Commission stated that the country has about 96 million buildings while another from the Bureau of Statistics said there are 42 million households in the country.
He asked why the number of houses built by the Federal, and state governments, and private developers were not factored in to determine the real housing deficits in the country.
Earlier, the chief executive officer of FMDQ Group, Mr. Bola Onadele Koko, who was represented by the group’s Senior Vice President, Mr. Emmanuel Etadahi, said with the document, the capital markets would serve as a key player in the development of Nigeria’s housing sector.
He said the document if properly implemented would unlock ‘dead’ capital estimated at US$300.00 billion for the Nigerian economy, which according to him is equivalent to 60.00 per cent of the country’s total Gross Domestic Product.
