Nigeria Housing Sector at 60: Magashi calls for stakeholders collaboration, asks the government to be more serious towards housing

Nigeria Housing Sector at 60: Magashi calls for stakeholders collaboration, asks the government to be more serious towards housing
By Onoja Johnson
 
Mallam Ali Mohammed Magashi has called on the stakeholders in the housing sector to form a synergy towards accelerating the provision of housing for Nigerians. He called on the federal government of Nigeria to be more committed to the housing sector which he described as the largest contributor to the Gross Domestic Product, stating that unimpressive result has been achieved so far in the sector.
 
 
Magashi who made this call on Wednesday in an interview with the Africahousingnews began by felicitating with Nigerians on the occasion of the 60^th  anniversary with a frantic historical background of the nation’s housing sector.
 
“I’d like to congratulate Nigeria and congratulate all of us Nigerians about this great hit of our 60^th anniversary as a nation. In terms of economic development, 60 years is a very small age for a nation, but nevertheless, Nigeria has not relented.
 
“As you know, if you go back historically, the British Building Society, even before independence, started way back in 1957, 58 in readiness for the independence of the country. And ever since, the federal, state, and local governments have made different contributions and different initiatives have come so far. And you can see them on the ground, the many developments all over the country that are done by the different governments.
 
 
 
The housing experts explain that what Nigeria needs is institutional infrastructure. He said, considering the importance of housing, and its benefits of creating jobs, it should be given serious attention by the government. He narrated that housing spans through various professions and that  institutional infrastructure is needed to make “housing development automatic with population growth. He added that “housing is a macroeconomic infrastructure for the government.”
 
 
In his view, the government has only done little. However, he admitted that more efforts have been put in place since 2000 with the Peter Odili Committee on Housing and Urban Development.
 
 
“There was a lot of work done to try to move housing forward to develop the institutional infrastructure. Unfortunately, as a growing country, there was a distraction in the legislature over the third term projects that jettisoned all the reforms that were supposed to come with the time the baby was thrown away with the bathwater and we started all over again. Now, success is not in the effort is in the result.
 
“Even though a lot of efforts have been put together, the results don’t show any success because we still dealing with issues of off-takers, all the developers, all over, everybody you see so many houses completed and they’re not sold because there’s no access to finance to the people who need it. And people need to understand that mortgage banking and commercial banking are two different things. Mortgage banking is just a part of the ecosystem of housing finance that makes sure that there is a cyclical chain that continues to generate liquidity.
 
 
“But as we clock this age and as we become more in population, because we’ve grown exponentially from 1960 to now, and the projection is that we’re either about 400 million people in the next 30 years, and that is a lot for any nation.
 
 
“There has to be a deliberate commitment by governments to develop the primary mortgage market and to link the primary mortgage market to the capital market. So, second key players in this country are no secondary players should be encouraged.”