NATURE OF HOUSING DELIVERY IN NIGERIA

NATURE OF HOUSING DELIVERY IN NIGERIA

UN-Habitat (2010; 2012) estimated total housing needs in Africa at around 4 million units per year with over 60 per cent of the demand required to accommodate urban residents and that the figure may likely increase to 5 million per year in the cities. This translates into nearly 15,000 dwellings per day in order to accommodate the expected urban population growth. UN-Habitat (2010) also observed that rapid urbanization is generating extraordinary demographic pressure and demand for housing, land and infrastructure especially in African cities.

In many developing countries, including Nigeria, urban housing crisis is escalating unabated despite a number of new policies, programs and strategies being engaged in by public and private sectors in addressing this problem. Government has recognized that the majority of those in need of housing in many less-developed nations in Africa, Asia and South America are in the low income categories and that some require special housing programs to be able to live in decent housing (Offiaet, 2014).

Several studies have indicated that public housing provision involves policy formulation, institutional development, actual housing provision, allocation and management (Omole, 2001; Valenca, 2007; Sengupta and Tipple, 2007). This goes to suggest that challenges in public housing provision are related to policy formulation, institutional growth and development as well as actual production and consumption of housing units and services. In fact, Sengupta and Tipple (2007) noted that the performance of public-sector housing in terms of total supply and quality, price and affordability of housing and services depends on these key areas and perhaps on other intervening factors.

Specifically, the actual production of housing units and associated services is one of the key objectives of public housing provision which aims at increasing decent and affordable housing stock within a country, state or locality. However, evidence from literature review clearly shows that public housing provision in many developing countries, including Nigeria, has not recorded any impressive result in matching housing production to housing demand, as there are huge housing supply deficits in many less developed countries (Rondinelli, 1990; Mukhija, 2004; Sengupta and Ganesan, 2004; Olotuah, 2010).

The burgeoning housing supply deficit in Nigerian which as at 2015 was put at over 35 million housing units (Onwuemenyi, 2015) for instance, has been blamed on low productivity in public-sector housing. Taking a closer look at planned and constructed number of housing units in the different public housing programs initiated between 1962 and 1999 record shows that a total of 618,498 housing units were planned for production in the various public housing schemes across the country and around 85,812 housing units representing around 14% of the planned housing units were actually completed. This achievement level clearly shows that many of the public housing programs initiated by government within that period failed to meet the targeted number of housing units.

With respect to affordable housing provision, the UN-HABITAT (2006) report on Nigeria noted that past public housing policies and programs in the country were aimed at enabling low-income earners gain access to decent housing at affordable cost. According to Aribigbola (2008), the 2002 New National Housing and Urban Development Policy (NNHUDP) for instance, asserted that no Nigerian is expected to pay more than 20% of his or her monthly income on housing. But to the contrary, prior studies (Onibokun, 1985; Awotona, 1990; Mba 1992; Olotuah and Bobadoye, 2009; Ibem, 2010) have shown that the targeted population of many past public housing schemes in Nigeria did not benefit from such schemes. This was due to high cost of housing units provided. Consequently, several authors have contended that the constraints in accessing housing inputs (land, building materials and finance) as well as cost of providing infrastructure were partly responsible for the hike in the cost of public housing beyond the reach of an average Nigerian (Ikejiofor, 1999; UN-HABITAT, 2006; Aribigbola, 2008).