Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, has said that 75 percent of the 42 million houses in Nigeria are substandard.
The vice president who stated this in his address at the ongoing Africa International Housing Show 2022 in Abuja, cited a study by PWC, pointing out that the figure translates to 31.6 million substandard houses.
Osinbajo, who was represented by the Managing Director, Family Homes Funds, Femi Adewole, said that though efforts were being intensified to make decent homes available for Nigerians, access to funds had remained a challenge, in addition to inability to implement the many policies and programmes enacted by various governments to tackle the problem.
“Our housing challenge in Nigeria presents itself in two primary forms. We have the issue of inadequate housing supply to meet the needs of a rapidly growing population, most significantly for people on low income and young people.”
“Secondly, a large proportion of our existing stock are substandard housing which do not meet widely accepted standards of habitability.”
According to him, the challenges continue to deepen with increasing social and income inequalities in our society.
“At the extreme, many households are faced with the dilemma of survival between food and adequate shelter,” he stated.
He, however, noted that the government was tackling the housing challenge very seriously.
According to him, over the last seven years, across different areas of government, a number of important initiatives which have the potential to enable us meet these challenges successfully going forward are being put in place.
“The government continues to support the Nigerian Mortgage Refinance Company originally established in 2015, with its guarantees enabling it to access the capital market competitively to refinance mortgages,” he added.
