An Abuja – based consultant and principal partner, Conanic Associates, Arch Shehu Tukur, has urged the federal government to provide affordable housing to address the challenges of accommodation faced by civil servants in the country.
Tukur said this during an interview with LEADERSHIP Sunday in his office, Abuja.
“You cannot be earning a salary of N100,000 and expect to pay a four bedroom flat in an estate in FCT, it is not possible, you are only making the civil servant go and steal.
“Government should deliberately subsidise a lot of things, but if the government did not deliberately subsidise between two to three million housing deficit,it will not be able to reduce housing issues in the near future because the population continues to increase every day so the deficit will continue to grow.
“If government can put N5billion in each of the cities in the country for housing deficit it will definitely reduce the level of unemployment in the country.
“Government cannot continue to spend money on roads, electricity as well as water without a housing development plan. It cannot work that way,” he added.
Shehu noted that the private sector can only come and intervene in the housing deficit and it also means that government must come with an infrastructural relief. So the government must have a deliberate plan for house delivery in the country,” he said.
