Recently, at Shelter Afrique’s annual general meeting and symposium in Abuja, Babatunde Fashola, Nigeria’s minister for power, works and housing, unveiled a roadmap for housing delivery in the country.
The roadmap, which focuses on home seekers who are in the majority and those who are most vulnerable, places emphasis on planning which, the minister believes, is key to successful execution, requiring a clear understanding of who we want to provide housing for.
“The first key to our roadmap in housing is planning and we must never get tired of explaining the necessity and importance of proper planning. It is the key to successful execution, it is the key to project completion, cost control and reduction in variation requests and financial calculations,” Fashola said.
The minister recalled that over the years, Nigeria had embarked on a series of housing initiatives but not one of them had been pursued with consistency or any measurable sustainability, disclosing that in his ministry they were convinced that these unsustainable efforts must change and give way to a sustainable and well thought out initiative.
“We are convinced that this change must be led by government and subsequently driven by the private sector,” he said, citing the public housing initiative of the United Kingdom, which was started by government in 1918 and, as of 2014, 64.8 percent of UK’s 53 million people were home owners.
The Singaporean initiative, he added, was started by government in 1960 and had provided housing for 80 percent of its 3 million people, pointing out that what was common to both models was that there was a uniformity of design, a common target to house working class people, and not the elite, standardisation of fittings like doors, windows, space, electrical and mechanical, and also a common concept of neighborhood.
Re-emphasising the focus of the plan on the low-income earners and the most vulnerable, the minister also recognised that there were people who wanted land to build for themselves, and also those who want town houses and duplexes, whether detached or semi-detached.
But he also recognises that this class of people are not in the majority and so, they are not part of the target of the plan. “The people who we must focus on are those in the majority and those who are most vulnerable.
“These are people in the bracket of those who graduated from university about five years ago and more; people who are in the income bracket of grade level nine to 15 in the public service and their counterparts, which include taxi drivers, market men and women, farmers, artisans who earn the same range of income,” the minister explained.
In building for these, he said, the ministry would conduct a survey of the people to determine what they expect and what they could pay; evolve agreeable housing types, between two and four designs that had a broad, national cultural acceptance, and standardise these designs so that they could design moulds to accelerate the number that could be built.
“Our plan requires us to standardise the size of our doors, windows, our toilet and bath fittings, our lighting fittings and other accessories so that our small and medium enterprises can respond to supply all the building materials, create diversification and jobs, and ensure that projects are completed with a steady supply of materials,” he said.
