Many a time, one wonders what accelerates growth, development and urbanization in some geographical locations, while some other places seem to be on a slower trajectory. The reason for this, is perhaps, the concentration of infrastructure and amenities in some areas than others.
Infrastructure is an essential component of Housing development all over the world. The availability of amenities including electricity, good transport network, pipe-borne water, drainages, waste disposal, Educational Facilities, Commercial centres amongst others, in a particular location, does not only attract residential growth and development to such a place, it also guarantees the health and well-being of those who reside in such a society.
Tracing the link between infrastructure and disease control, Nigeria’s Former Minister of Mines and Solid Minerals Arc.Musa Sada has highlighted the need for a Mass Urban Development programme for the country, as means of alleviating poverty and preventing the spread of diseases within the country.
Sada stated this while speaking to issues as guest Panellist at a webinar recently hosted by the Housing Development Advocacy Network, HDAN with the theme: “Housing as a Governance Tool and Legislative Response To Poverty And Disease Control”.
In his words, “What we need now for both the health, security and infrastructure issues, is to start a Massive Urban Infrastructure programme for the country and not just for Abuja. One of the way we can subsidize the housing program is by integrating the housing itself as a critical infrastructure. If you build road, your thinking should also be towards how do you use the road for leveraging in providing houses?”.
He explained further that the covid-19 pandemic has underscored the need for better housing policies within the country, adding that housing standards cannot be compromised when considering poverty and disease prevention.
“This pandemic has exposed us to the weakness of our own standards and policies that we need to go back to. If we must learn anything from this, going forward, it will ravage us if we play with our housing policies, because our housing policies are supposed to give us standards. One of the critical requirement of attending to this pandemic is for us to have a side committee that would start looking at the housing standards, this is the long term solution to this.
“The first and most important thing to look at is the concept of the housing itself and the need for those standards to be put in place to be able to say someone is really housed. One of the best definition of housing quality is the indoor aired quality. Materials used to build the house, how you planned it, it is all geared towards having very good indoor air quality” he said.
While emphasizing the need for stakeholders’ engagement within the industry, the Former Minister stated that the bulk of the work lies with the private sector and government should involve stakeholders within the industry in policy formulation.
“The bulk of the work in housing delivery is on the private sector. Government’s role is not visible. The government should come in to support the less privileged to be able to house themselves properly. Except you balance the two objectives, you are not likely to get the result that you want, because the delivery system is left to the private sector and the private sector has its own objective that’s why they talk more on finance.
“The role of government and the private sector must be balanced and the government must subsidize housing with the low income group. We must have serious stakeholders’ engagement. You need to bring them as a critical stakeholder group when taking decisions on the housing, because you can end up solving only 15 to 20 percent of the population of the country while 80 percent is unsolved” he noted.
On the issue of policy formulation, he said “We must have the urban development and housing policies properly articulated. When articulated we must make sure that we look at all the critical; stakeholders that are supposed to be a party to the documents and we must not make sure that the largest percentage of the population are counted as stakeholders.
“One of the things we need to do is to get the correct policies that are geared towards solving the problems. For the architect, you must have the code and people must be punished for violating the code unless we are able to do that, we are not likely to see the light. Platforms must be formed to proffer solution to housing problems”.
