By Kingsley Adegboye

The hope of low-income Nigerians to have decent shelter lies in the intervention of the federal government which should provide the enabling environment for the private property developers to thrive. This view was canvassed by a Lagos-based realtor and chief executive officer of Wichtech Nigeria Limited, Deacon Chidozie Nwankwo.

Nwankwo

Nwankwo added that once there is the enabling environment for private property developers to thrive, the developers who are expected to engage in mass housing construction for low income group will build housing units that are affordable.

“As a realtor, the cost of providing a unit of housing is not within the reach of the poor because of so many factors that are militating against development. There is no way a private property developer would build a house for the poor to inhabit considering the very high cost of construction. For anybody to aspire to own a unit of housing in the present day Nigeria, that person apart from being a rich man, should be ready to embrace mortgage financing which is the best form of accessing home ownership anywhere in the world.

“The reason for the scarcity of houses for the masses is because the ones that are available are definitely beyond the reach of the masses. To be able to own their houses, there is the need for them to recourse to mortgage as it is done in developed climes. Let me also state here unequivocally, that only the government is in the position to build mass housing for the poor because of the resources at its disposal. But if you are expecting a private property developer to build mass housing, then I am afraid, it will never happen,” the Wichtech boss said.

The realtor who spoke to Vanguard Homes & Property insisted that with the prevailing economic situation in the country, a common man has no hope of having a roof over his head in Nigeria. He called on the government to wake up to its responsibility of ensuring that more and more housing units are provided to meet the enormous housing short fall in the country.

According to him, “apart from this, I don’t see a situation where the people at the lower rung of the ladder would be able to afford the cost of housing in the country because no private property developer is in business for charity. His primary concern in business is to get returns on his investment..Therefore, his primary objective is to maximize profit. The issue of housing should; be a joint thing between government and the private sector. Housing is one of the key demands of man and there is no way any sensible and responsive government would abandon such a sector”, he noted.

On incessant building collapse in the country, he said the issue has become a source of national embarrassment to both the professionals in built environment and stakeholders alike, adding that all hands to be on deck to check the occurrence. To start with, the issue of using sub-standard building materials for construction by some developers needs to be addressed as that is one of the major factors responsible for building collapse in the country.“When this trend is checked it would go a long way in arresting the ugly development. Once this unwholesome attitude is nipped in the bud, it would be one step in eliminating the incidents of collapse. The way out is to have in place, a National Building Code (NBC) that would serve as ‘Bible’ for operators in the construction industry, he said and called on the National Assembly pass the draft bill on the National Building Code into law. “With NBC in place, I believe that sanity would be restored into the construction industry. I understand that the bill has gone through the second treading.

I know that members of the NASS are Nigerians who have the interest of the masses at heart and therefore, would be willing and ready to pass the bill into law. With all these things in place, we are on the way to resolving the perennial issue of building collapse in the country,” he said.