Odunayo calls for improved income, collaboration with Govt, PPPs to boost housing

The Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer UPDC, Mr Odunayo Ojo has call on the government to improve the income of workers as well as increase collaboration between government and Private Public Partnership (PPP) in order to enhance the provision, accessibility and affordability of housing in the country.

Odunayo, who made this submission in his presentation during PEWAN 2024 conference entitled: ” Resolving the financial and regulatory dilemma to achieve renewed hope agenda in housing” in Lagos.

He stated that take Nigeria situation today even with the minimum wage of N70,000 now, and people who earn it still desires housing as a basic need of man, even with the mortgage system we are refering to, giving the cost of construction it will take so many years and many interventions, support or subsidy for any one earning minimum wage in Nigeria to be able to acquire housing.

He explained that the major problem of the affordability of housing starts with the income, and the level of income in Nigeria is relatively low, as a result of that it makes it very difficult for housing to be affordable.

According to him, majority of Nigerians cannot afford housing even with all the interventions because everywhere in the world there is no affordable cement, affordable reinforcement, affordable infrastructure and even affordable land and try to buy land in any urban area in Nigeria even with the intervention of government it is not cheap.

Even with all the intervention that are being provided, he said majority of our population cannot afford the housing that are being delivered.

A great number of Nigerians spend significant amount of their income, sometime much more than 50 percent o their income on housing and this is not sustainable.

According to him, currently Nigeria population is over 200million people and out of this about 90 percent are termed to be low income and as a result of that affordability becomes a problem.

So, we have a huge urban population which is about 50 percent and 61.7 percent of those people living in urban population are living in slums.

These housing issue, he said have many dimension as there is quantity of housing and quality of housing and if the 61.7 percent of those people living in urban population are said to live in slums, then we have a problem.

He noted that no matter who you quote there are about 20 million housing deficit and that about 900,000 housing units are needed to be built every year to be able to arrest this gap that is growing every year, which will entail severe millions of dollars to be able to close this gap and that is a huge proportion of our GDP.

He listed the key issues that will be able to make housing more affordable to include: “Land allocation cost, because there can be no housing without land and in some areas, where are vast lands before you think of how much cost it will take to clear the roads, to put power, water, sewage among other amenities to make the land usable you will realise that the cost of acquiring land is not affordable. So, we need the support of state and federal government to be able to expand what they are doing in infrastructure development to make to make the cost of land acquisition lower.

“ We all know about the high cost of building materials and the need for us to find alternative to importation of these materials. With the devaluation of the Naira and high cost of logistics it is not sustainable to import most of our building materials, so we should begin to look at alternatives that are sourced locally to avoid foreign exchange and also bring construction cost lower.

There is still inadequate access to finance and if you look at the way the NHF, the Federal Mortgage and other institutions that are primarily involved in providing finance in the housing industry are structured, most of them are structured to support salary earners, whereas the informal sectors are huge and non-salary earners for instance the woman selling on the street, tailors and film sellers, among others. They do not have a consistent or regular source of income and without that it becomes very difficult to predict their cash flow. And without knowing their cash flow it becomes very difficult to know the type of financing that is available for them because that is just the way it is structured. We need to look at alternative system of financing like cooperative and collective financing.

With the advert of rail lines in Nigeria, he said it becomes easier to go to areas where land might be cheaper, and it becomes easier for people to live in those rural places and work in the urban centres, adding that as that continue you will see the high cost of housing reduced.

He lamented that there are instance of multiple taxations and the cost of transferring titles and in a place like Lagos if you want to transfer titles today you will realise that there are many hurdles to cross.

He noted that government should not see land as primarily a source of income generation item because the more we reduce the cost of acquiring land and perfecting titles I think the more affordable our housing will become.

He appealed to state government and the agencies involved in land administration in our states to realize that this is a social problem that we have at hand and there is a need for us to contribute our own quota.

He mentioned that internally generated revenue is sycophant to the state, but also an effective land administration that will suit this process should be considered.

He emphasized that bureaucracy is a problem for those in the private sector to get building permit, site approval and commended the Lagos State government for what they are doing in this direction in built administration and urged other states to emulate them.

He stated that with a lot of digitalisations going on and a lot of transparency going on because for every day you don’t have paper work complete, you cannot move to site, adding this cost will finally be transferred to the customers.

He pointed out that skilled labour is a problem in Nigeria and to find artisans you will only get people coming from Ghana and Republic of Benin.

He said there is a need for cooperation between various sectors as well as collaboration in area such as Private Public Partnership (PPP) and other sectors.

He urged government to try and waive some of the cost in charges and levies in order for people to be able to gain access to affordable housing in Nigeria.

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