If you ask an average young Nigerian worker today, they will tell you that the bulk of their salary goes to house rent. In this article, I tried to provide a few solutions to the housing deficit in the country.
We must understand that the right to housing is a fundamental human right and I believe that any government interested in the welfare of its people should be bothered about how its citizens will have access to safe, secure and habitable homes as recommended by the United Nations. It really bothers me that the housing sector in Nigeria is poorly regulated by the government and there is almost zero attempt to provide a solution to the housing gap.
Recently, I was at an event where a lady shared with us how difficult her childhood was because of the housing problem her family had. She narrated how her family lived in the same one-room self-contained apartment from when she was a child until she graduated from university. She explained further how that childhood experience shaped her and her siblings. According to her, she lived in fear of poverty and would do anything, sometimes unethical or even illegal, to make money, regardless of the means, as she believed the end justified the means. Her goal was simply to make money. She said the same was true for all her siblings, as they all kept hustling, living in perpetual fear of poverty. She explained that they all had a silent agreement to never live the simple and ‘honest’ life that kept their parents in ‘one room with four children’, even if it meant going into criminal activities.
The story above is the only way I can strongly communicate the importance of housing as a major socio-economic problem in Nigeria. Shelter is a basic human need, and the woman in my story simply wanted better housing compared to what she had growing up. If her mindset had not changed and she had continued down that path, one day she may have had access to government funds and may have resorted to stealing the funds to acquire houses, many of which she would never have lived in. The trauma would have continued to drive her.
It is a fact that every family in Nigeria spends a significant part of their annual income on house rent, but I am mostly concerned about the provision of housing for low-income earners in the country. Most efforts aimed at addressing the housing deficit in the country today target non-existent middle-income and high-income earners.
I believe that besides the fact that housing affects the national economy in terms of worker productivity, the Nigerian government should be concerned about the worsening housing gap between the rich and the poor, which has left many homeless or forced them to live in slums, where they are gradually stripped of their human dignity due to lack of necessary social infrastructure.
According to the Journal of Surveying, Construction, and Property (JSCP) (11th Edition, 2020), one way to end extreme poverty is through home ownership. “Home ownership is a good example of balancing the wealth gap…”
Research has also shown that proceeds of crime and corruption can often be traced back to the real estate sector. This suggests that further research may establish a connection between childhood trauma related to homelessness and involvement in criminal acts, and by extension, insecurity.
I recently came across the Malaysian housing model, which I believe can be adapted by Nigeria. The country developed a scheme called the “My First Home Scheme”, where the government provided a 10 per cent deposit on the listing price of the home, and the applicant is not expected to pay back the 10 per cent, as it is a token contribution from the Malaysian government to its citizens. In Malaysian cities, houses are also constructed for youths and young people to serve as transitional homes. According to Daley and Moms (2011), homeownership is a form of social protection that can also increase the productivity of a country’s working population.
Nigeria can also adopt the public-private partnership model used in Malaysia, which is primarily controlled by the government. Developers are required to develop within a certain range of requirements, and the selling price is fixed by the government for low-cost housing. The conditions for such development are determined by the peculiarities of each state.
According to the JSCP journal, the 2012 National Housing Policy in Nigeria, if implemented, makes provision for a computerised open registration system for house developers. An integrated database on low-cost housing supply and demand could help bridge the housing gap and achieve the United Nations’ “Housing for all by the year 2030” agenda.
The government should also establish necessary structures to prevent issues of favouritism, bureaucracy, and other corrupt practices that have made it difficult for low-income earners to access the low-cost housing schemes created by previous administrations.
Lastly, while the necessary structure, in the form of a property database, is being put in place, the government should find a way to curb the excesses of wicked house agents who sometimes want to take up to 40 per cent of the actual rent amount. The houses available for rent should be listed, and a committee consisting mostly of estate valuers and professional property managers must be established to create a code of conduct to regulate the activities of house agents across all levels of government.
- Adeyemi writes from Ibadan via [email protected]
