Housing Council Tells FG, States to Unlock Land and Make Mortgages Affordable
Written on
Permanent Secretary for Housing and Urban Development Dr Shuaib Belgore has urged federal and state governments to remove land and housing-finance bottlenecks, warning that structural challenges continue to undermine affordable housing delivery in Nigeria.
The permanent secretary of the Federal Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, Dr Shuaib M.L. Belgore, has called on federal and state governments to unlock land and make mortgages more accessible, warning that persistent structural challenges continue to undermine efforts to provide decent and affordable accommodation across Nigeria. He spoke on Wednesday at the 15th Meeting of the National Council on Lands, Housing and Urban Development in Sokoto.
Belgore identified limited access to housing finance, insecure land ownership, high construction costs, expensive land registration and titling, bureaucratic bottlenecks and weak coordination between federal and state governments as major obstacles requiring urgent intervention. He said the country's housing delivery system must be restructured to reflect the financial realities of low- and middle-income earners, stressing that mortgage products must become more accessible and attractive if more Nigerians are to achieve homeownership.
According to him, land remains fundamental to housing development, making stronger collaboration between federal and state governments imperative, particularly in addressing land administration challenges and ensuring the availability of properly planned land for residential development.
The permanent secretary also called for stronger institutional capacity, improved inter-agency coordination, digitalised processes, better use of data and more effective regulation. He argued that well-designed housing policies would achieve little without institutions capable of translating them into tangible results, citing the high cost of construction, ownership complications associated with the Land Use Act and fragmented policy implementation as persistent impediments to sustainable housing delivery.
The meeting was themed “Strengthening Mortgage, Land and Institutional Systems for Accelerated and Inclusive Housing Delivery” and brought together stakeholders to examine reforms that could expand access to affordable homes across income groups and locations. Belgore, who said housing remains central to President Bola Tinubu's Renewed Hope Agenda, urged participants to move beyond policy discussions and produce actionable recommendations, noting that the council's success would ultimately depend on how effectively its resolutions are implemented by the various levels of government.