Studies show that about 75 per cent of the houses in Nigeria are substandard, the Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, said on Monday.

Osinbajo, who stated that though efforts were being intensified to make decent homes available for Nigerians, access to funds had remained a challenge.

He disclosed this during his address at the ongoing Africa International Housing Show 2022 in Abuja.

The Vice President, who was represented at the show by the Managing Director, Family Homes Funds, Femi Adewole, said, “Access to affordable housing is a major challenge that remains substantially unsolved in Nigeria.

“Although there is no shortage of policies and programmes that have been enacted by various governments to tackle this problem, effective implementation remains a persistent dilemma. 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 is substandard housing which do not meet widely accepted standards of habitability. According to a study by PWC, about 75 per cent of the 42 million housing units we have in Nigeria, which is about 31.6 million of them were substandard,” he stated.

Based on the above, the Vice President stated that Nigeria had problems of creating new homes and the problem of actually addressing the substandard nature of a significant number of the units across the country.

“These 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.

Osinbajo added, “This is not congruent with this administration’s vision for a better Nigeria where even the weakest among us will have the dignity of decent homes.”

He, however, noted that the government was tackling the housing challenge very seriously.

He said, “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.”

Identifying one of such initiative, Osinbajo said, “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.”

(The PUNCH)

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