By Perpetua Onuegbu
A Civil Society Organisation (CSO), Connected Development, has urged the Federal Government to bridge the housing needs of citizens and reduce the high incidence of inequality in the country.
Hamzat Lawal, Chief Executive of Connected Development, made the call on Tuesday in Abuja at the commemoration of the 5th anniversary of BraveRock Group, a real estate organisation.
According to him, there is a global commitment to ensure that by 2030, every person must have a roof over their head, with only five years left to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
“You know, Sustainable Development Goal 9 talks about industry, innovation and infrastructure. And for me, we’re particularly interested in Goal 10 that talks about reducing inequality.
“We believe that if we’re able to meet the housing deficit, we’ll reduce inequality. People will have a healthy lifestyle and we would have a country that all of us can ensure that we contribute our role in the gross domestic product.
“Today, BraveRock is celebrating its 5th anniversary and for me, why we’ve decided to select Brave Rock as one of our partners is they have shown consistency.
“They have shown integrity in their approach. These are young people that are very focused. We’ve seen that their model is empowering young professionals, creating jobs that are sustainable.
“We believe that their model can help to curb the corruption that we’re experiencing in the housing sector,” Lawal said.
He called on the government to implement interventions that could help scale up SDG Goal 17 on partnerships, especially public-private partnerships, to provide affordable housing and reduce inequity.
Lawal also urged the government to establish a national housing data centre to collect reliable housing data for effective policy and planning.
Among other solutions, he proposed inclusive land reforms as a key measure to enable the government generate tax incentives from productive use of vacant land, which he noted had seen inflated pricing.
“The government should promote affordable housing finance models, like rent-to-own, cooperative, micro-mortgage, tailored for low-income earners.
“Let us also encourage the use of local, low-cost building materials and green technologies to reduce construction costs,” Lawal urged.
On his part, the Managing Director of BraveRock Group, Usman Zambuk, said the company had delivered 350 housing units since its inception in 2020.
“Now, what we hope to achieve in the next five years again is to see that we more than doubled the number that we have done now.
“We have also done projects in Kaduna, in Kano, in Bauchi and in Gombe states. Our aim as a company is to deliver quality and affordable houses.
“We have seen, like my friend here mentioned, that in Nigeria there are about 28 million housing deficits. This is a very, very huge number and it’s growing actually. It used to be about 17 million in 1999.
“It is 28 million now. Check out the trend and see where we are going to be in 2030. If nothing serious is done with regards to the housing sector.”
Zambuk said the company is committed to producing affordable houses for citizens but called on the government to address the high cost of land, imported building materials, and financing, factors making housing unaffordable.
He expressed optimism that the partnership with Connected Development would help the company gain access to land and finance, while commending the FCT Minister on ongoing infrastructure development. (NAN)