Experts fault FG's plan for 100 social housing units in each of 774 LGAs
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Housing experts say the Federal Government's plan to build 100 social housing units in every local government area was set without a needs assessment and could leave thousands of units unoccupied.
Housing experts have faulted the Federal Ministry of Housing and Urban Development's plan to build 100 social housing units in each of the 774 local government areas, saying the target was adopted without a needs assessment. The Minister of Housing and Urban Development, Engr Muttaqha Darma, had said the programme formed part of the government's drive to bridge the national housing deficit.
Estate surveyor Femi Oyedele put the programme at 77,400 units across 768 local government areas and six area councils, and said building on that scale without a needs assessment test would limit its impact. "These will not be impactful as their construction did not follow the needs assessment test. It is not even practicable," he said, arguing that social housing may work in Abuja Municipal Area Council but not in Eti-Osa, Ikeja or Port Harcourt City local governments.
Oyedele warned that maintenance costs in high-value urban areas would be unbearable for the Federal Government. He recalled that civil-servant housing in Abuja and Lagos was sold to occupiers and private buyers under President Olusegun Obasanjo's administration because of the cost of upkeep, and asked what the government would do differently.
He pointed to a history of vacant public housing: the Shehu Shagari housing units built by the Federal Housing Authority in Ikire, Osun State, in 1980 are still unoccupied; about 200 two-bedroom flats built by the FHA at Africa area in Osogbo stood empty for more than five years until Redeemers University bought them as staff quarters; and the 748-unit Zuba Federal Housing Estate in Abuja, commissioned on 2 May 2023 at a cost of N9.5 billion on 18.5 hectares, is about 70 per cent vacant.
In insecurity-hit areas, Oyedele argued that new units make little sense. He listed Gwoza, Damboa, Konduga, Bama, Askira/Uba and Chibok in Borno State, and Orsu, Orlu, Njaba, Okigwe and Onuimo in Imo State, as places where residents have abandoned or lost homes and should instead be supported to rebuild on their former sites. Agege in Lagos and Lagelu in Oyo, he added, need slum upgrading rather than 100 new units.
The Executive Director of the Housing Development Advocate of Nigeria, Barr Festus Adebayo, said government should focus on completing and allocating existing uncompleted projects inherited from previous administrations, and said there was no evidence of funding for the 100-units-per-local-government plan.