By YINKA KOLAWOLE

Discussants at the recently concluded Lagos Economic Summit tagged, EHINGBETI 2014, submitted that efficient and stable power supply will facilitate the delivery of affordable housing in Nigeria.

At one of the sessions of the summit with the topic: ‘Harnessing Electricity to Grow Agriculture, Transportation and Housing Sector’, experts in the housing sector noted that unstable power supply in the country has hampered the real estate sector’s growth through inability of indigenous industries to produce cheap local building materials.

They lamented that six months after the official handover of the of the successor companies carved out of the defunct Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) to private investors, the nation’s economy including the housing sector, was yet to show signs of growth. The expectation, according to them, was that the privatisation of the PHCN successor firms would lead to the growth of the housing sector through steady supply of power to local industries and, consequently, lower prices of locally-produced building materials.

Mr. Hassan Usman, Managing Director, ASO Savings and Loans, said efficient power system in Nigeria could guaranty more affordable houses, saying the high cost of building components had left developers with no choice but to import building materials.

“We can’t deliver affordable housing with consistent importation of building materials, hence, we need an efficient power system in the country to enable our manufacturing firms to produce building components at cheaper rates to make affordable homes a reality. With an efficient power supply, it’s easier to deliver affordable housing,” he said.

According to him, if power supply was stable, industries which specialised in producing building materials such as tiles, sanitary wares, etc, would be producing at cheaper rates, thereby enabling property developers to deliver affordable houses to middle and low-income earners. This he however noted is not the case as most developers have continued to patronise the seemingly cheaper imported building materials despite the high exchange rate of the naira to foreign currencies.

In his presentation, Olumide Olusanya, a professor of Architecture at University of Lagos, said to meet its estimated demand of two million housing units, Lagos State needs faster alternative building techniques such as sustainable prefabricated building systems for quicker construction. He however pointed out that lack of steady power supply to steel industries makes such unachievable.

Lagos State commissioner for Housing, Bosun Jeje, attributed the inability of the state to build mini-apartments in high-rise buildings to epileptic power supply. “Currently, our high-rise buildings are limited to four floors and not the usual 10 floors or more we see in other parts of the world,” he added. According to him, the state lacks adequate power supply, while high-rise buildings demand constant power supply to power some amenities such as escalators for their occupants.