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Housing Problems In Nigeria And Solutions

Housing Problems In Nigeria And Solutions

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As it is well known that shelter is an integral portion of human life that can never be sidelined, and housing as it is well called must be in place to protect from harsh weather condition and also a place of rest after a stressful workday. So, why look into the housing problems in Nigeria? It is a property that one cannot avoid to acquire because it is a comfortable zone that gives absolute rest to the mind and serves as the safest place for your belongings.

However, without disputing the truth. the challenge faced by Nigeria in the housing sector can be well traced back to the uncommitted determination towards housing development.  Developing a veritable and accountable system of finance in the past years has been an unclimbable mountain for the country due to greedy and political profits, the absence of adept, knowledgeable, industrious and updated leaders ultimately in the arms of making policy and needed institutional bodies or agencies.

HOUSING PROBLEMS IN NIGERIA AND SOLUTIONS

  • Rural Housing Challenges:

In Rural regions, challenges/housing problems in Nigeria are well related to qualitative shortcomings such as the house value, the location and the level of well-being or goodness. Housing in Rural regions is not up to standard as they are deprived of social amenities like transportation, electricity as well as water supply services and facilities which are not well connected with the rural centers and even inadequately provided.

  • Urban Housing Challenges:

The housing challenges faced by the Urban regions in Nigeria include; slum dwelling, the poor state of living, shortage of housing, homelessness, squatting and overcrowding

In spite of the challenges of the housing in Nigeria being classified into Rural and Urban regions, some other sources and reasons are responsible for the pull-down, they are;

Problems Of Housing In Nigeria

  1. Poverty/Affordability Rate:

The unaffordability of houses in the country is caused by the space between the wideness of choice of house to be acquired and the reason for the housing, leading to a crisis of demand due to high price. It is important to have it in mind that people go for things of the cheaper rate at which the clarification of housing debt should be well considered at first.

Research made on affordability has clearly shown that people earning low income are capable f securing an N2million housing unit as the construction of a house from the scratch is so expensive in Nigeria. The main reasons behind the high costs are; skilled labor expenses, the high cost of building materials and the miscellaneous public infrastructure cost like road, sewer, water supply and so on.

In Nigeria, statistics show that 75% of households in urban areas are constructed with concrete as the cost of cement is about 30-40% higher live in dwellings constructed with concrete. Cement prices in Nigeria are also reportedly about 30-40% higher than in the foreign market prices or to other nearby countries.

  1. Ineffective Housing Budget:

The underdevelopment experienced in the industry of mortgage can be well related to a critical housing challenge of unresponsive finance access during 1960-2009 generating transactions less than 100,000. This shows that a lot of landowners in Nigeria are not qualified to request for loan or mortgage services as the assigned financial institutions will not give out a loan without a registered collateral title. With this on the ground, Nigeria may never scale through this mess if a new platform is not introduced to prop landowners to migrate from the initial informal market to formal market which involves the mortgage industry, accredited registration, and development.

  1. High Population Growth:

Inadequate and deficiency of housing required is directly consequential to the day to day increase in Nigeria’s population.  The current provision of 100, 000 housing cells can never be sufficient for a population of over 127 million and still increasing at the rate of 2%.

  1. High Rate Of Migration To Urban Centres:

As stated above, with the estimation of the annual national population as mentioned above to be just over 2% growth rate with an annual population of about 4% growth rate in the urban centers. The present population of Nigeria is more interested in the urban centers, cities, and towns due to inadequate or lack of amenities in the rural areas, Nigeria has a population that is becoming more and more focused to the urban areas, towns, and cities. Increase in birth rate, high rate of Rural-Urban Migration, lack of infrastructure and employment opportunities are the major cause of increased population growth rate in the urban regions. All this has grossly increased the housing demand leading to numerous slum communities and overcrowding.

  1. High Cost Of Building Materials:

The outraging pressure of inflation on building materials and standard wage of the labor market are the causes of high construction cost. Increase in labor wages, cost of construction material and price of cement are all the key factors to be considered before choosing desired construction technique.

Others are; Shortage of Infrastructural Facilities, Regulations in land acquisition and Tilting and Registration of land Cost.

SOLUTIONS TO HOUSING CHALLENGES IN NIGERIA

Quickly below is the list of people possible solutions to the challenges we face in the Housing sector in Nigeria;

  • Establishing a Reliable Mortgage System
  • Total Implementation and Review of the National Housing Policy
  • Easy Land and House Regulations
  • Implementation of Public Housing Projects
  • Provision of Adequate Infrastructures
  • Genuine Research Policy
  • Private Sector Full Participation
  • Locally Manufacturing Building Materials
  • Provision of Rental Houses.

The political, social, and most crucially the economic segmentation often in every society requires the outstanding role played by the housing of the masses. The lone widest group of household disbursement and to achieve a stable and a healthy environment, it should be well noted that only proper Housing projects will assure these qualities.

For a country to have a successful housing project, an environment that is stable under macroeconomic is required. An example of brutal economies features is the real attested interest rate in Nigeria and normalization to inflation rates that are high. Mortgages affordability are grossly lessened with these features strongly effective.

Long-term loans are reluctantly offered in a manner that the customer is so conscious of liquidity due to the brutal economy affecting the supply of mortgage forms and fund the lender offers. Talking of favorable drafting and actualization of policies as a problem solver changing to government rigid commendable institution as the Nigeria Mortgage Refinance Company (NMRC) which is an assuring platform towards the process of scrapping up this challenge. Another classic attributes of financing Housing project is the process of securing the loan by mortgaging properties.

Another distinguishing characteristic of housing finance is the best ability to mortgage the property to secure the loan. This implies that enforced lawsuit be allowed and be in other for processes and land laws like foreclosure law, title registration and so on. For property rights to be effective, the condition of the excellent and all-encompassing system of land registration must be Paramount.

As this process cannot find its way through in Nigeria, a good number of land registries has been incorporated at the state hierarchy which has driven some states to take effective action towards this challenge. It is very vital that states are persuaded to get this ideology to a cruising stage. Countless efforts are put in place by banks in contribution to overcome the challenge through the registry system of centralized bank respiratory assets and land.

Total eradication of housing challenges cannot be fully ascertained in Nigeria since a wholesome number of people are still living homelessly in more advanced and developed country. With Nigeria’s population counting about 174 million of which 35% of the people reside in the urban area, which vividly shows how cumbersome these housing challenges are. This challenge was summarized down to two basic categories which are the Rural and Urban area. The challenges encountered in the Urban regions are quantitative in nature while that of Rural region is qualitative in nature.

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CONCLUSION ON HOUSING PROBLEMS IN NIGERIA

If the above-listed solutions can be followed, although it will not guarantee total eradication of this challenge but will curb it to some ideal extent. If building materials cost can be reduced to some level and locally produced cement is qualitative enough, other cement industries established and the price is lower than it is currently, it is assured that Housing deficiency will grossly reduce.

Tag: Problems Of Housing In Nigeria

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