By YINKA KOLAWOLE

Federal Ministry of Lands, Housing and Urban Development will start a housing revolution in the country with the aid of the N2 billion grant recently secured from businessman, Alh. Aliko Dangote, to build houses for low income Nigerians, even as it seeks alternative to the use of cement in building construction.

It would be recalled that Dangote recently pledged to float a N2 billion revolving fund in support of the transformation agenda of the federal government to boost housing development in Nigeria. He said the fund is to serve as a revolving facility to stimulate job creation through the construction of houses on a build- sell-off and replenish basis.

Housing Minister, Ms. Ama Pepple, in a remark at a stakeholders’ meeting on social housing organised by Social Housing Advocacy Group, a Non government Organisation (NGO), in Abuja, noted that the high cost of cement and land are partly responsible for the inaccessibility of less privileged Nigerians to affordable housing.

Alhaji Aliko Dangote

She reiterated government’s political will to provide social housing for Nigerians while calling for private sector’s partnership.

Convener of the meeting, Mr. Ezekiel Nyang-Edem, who is National Coordinator, Social Housing Advocacy Group, said that meeting was convened to help draw attention to the worsening housing situation in the country, adding that government should see provision of houses as citizens’ right and not privilege. He said that his NGO was formed to address the social problem of housing needs of Nigerians.

“Realising the need to provide for disadvantaged Nigerians in order to address social problems, this meeting of stakeholders in the housing sector is put together to find ways of making houses available at affordable cost to low income Nigerians,” he said.

Chairman of the occasion, Mr. Fortune Ebie, in his remark, noted that social housing is supposed to be for low income earners and the disadvantaged groups and that it must be affordable by these groups.

He warned that revolution is imminent in the country if the less privileged is not properly housed, and therefore advocated for subsidy on social housing.