Housing Drive Stalls As Land, Mortgage Barriers Persist

Nigeria’s drive to close its housing deficit faces major obstacles as restrictive land administration, expensive mortgages and high construction costs continue to shut millions of citizens out of homeownership, prompting renewed calls for sweeping reforms by federal and state governments.

The Permanent Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, Dr. Shuaib M.L. Belgore, said the country must urgently address these structural challenges if its housing policies are to translate into affordable homes for ordinary Nigerians.

Belgore spoke on Wednesday at the 15th Meeting of the National Council on Lands, Housing and Urban Development in Sokoto, where he challenged stakeholders to develop practical solutions to the persistent problems affecting housing delivery nationwide.

He identified limited access to housing finance, insecure land ownership, costly land registration and titling, bureaucratic delays and weak coordination between the federal and state governments as critical impediments to expanding housing supply.

The permanent secretary warned that without reforms capable of making mortgages accessible to low- and middle-income earners, homeownership would remain beyond the reach of a significant section of the population. He called for housing finance products that reflect Nigerians’ income levels and prevailing economic realities.

Belgore also stressed the need to overhaul land administration, noting that access to properly planned and legally secure land was fundamental to accelerating residential development. He urged federal and state authorities to strengthen collaboration in resolving land-related bottlenecks and improving access to developable plots.

Beyond land and finance, he called for stronger housing institutions, improved regulatory oversight, digitalised administrative processes and better use of data to enhance efficiency and accountability. He maintained that policy initiatives would continue to deliver limited results unless institutions responsible for implementation were adequately equipped and coordinated.

He attributed the slow progress of successive housing initiatives partly to rising construction costs, complications associated with the Land Use Act and fragmented policy implementation, warning that these longstanding problems required coordinated action rather than isolated interventions.

Despite the challenges, Belgore reaffirmed the importance of affordable housing to President Bola Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda, urging participants to ensure that the council’s deliberations produced workable measures to improve mortgage access, reform land administration and strengthen institutional performance.

The meeting, held under the theme “Strengthening Mortgage, Land and Institutional Systems for Accelerated and Inclusive Housing Delivery,” brought together stakeholders to examine reforms to expand access to decent housing across income groups and geographic locations. Belgore challenged participants to move beyond policy discussions, stressing that the real measure of success would be the effective implementation of the council’s recommendations by all tiers of government.