By YINKA KOLAWOLE

President of Nigerian Institution of Building (NIOB), Mr. Chuck Omeife, has questioned the sincerity of the federal government in implementing the new housing policy.

Omeife who was speaking at a recent media event, said while the effort of government at formulating the new policy is commendable, the willingness to initiate and provide the necessary interventionist programmes as enunciated in the policy is doubtful. According to him, “lack of implementation has always been the crux of the matter. Our prayer is that this time, government takes the bull by the horn and put the issue of housing on a roller coastal.”

He blamed the haphazard implementation of the National Building Code (NBC), since it was approved in 2008, on lack of enabling law to bring violators to book, adding that this has remained one big challenge for the built environment and has contributed to the incessant building collapse happening across the country. He lamented that non-implementation of the building code has given quacks the courage to continue to create havoc, killing people and wasting resources with negative consequences on the economy.

Omeife recalled that the House of Representatives Committee on Housing and Habitat recently convened an interactive meeting with all stakeholders in the built environment. He urged members of the National Assembly to accelerate work on promulgating an enabling law that would make any contravention or noncompliance with the provisions of the National Building Code a crime punishable by law, assist in the fight against quackery in the built environment and stop further deaths as a result of building collapse. “This is one law that can assist to create sanity in built environment sector of the Nigerian economy and thus jump-start the sector’s contribution to National development.” he said.

In a related development, Omeife has called on the federal government to take the issue of provision of mass housing beyond rhetoric, in reaction to the announcement earlier in the year by the Minister of Housing, Lands and Urban Development, Ms. Ama Pepple, that government plans to build one million houses every year.

According to him, “the one million housing units being envisaged by government was ‘ideal’ but the problem is that of implementation”. He noted that the issue of mass housing goes beyond mere propaganda, noting that over the years successive governments at the centre had been talking about providing mass housing for the populace but, so far, nothing concrete had been done in that regard.

Omeife said that unless the core people who know something about building were put in the picture, it would be an exercise in futility. He called for active involvement of professionals in the built environment in the execution of the project in order to make it work, adding that the reason why similar projects or concepts had failed is not unconnected with the absence of the political will to make it happen.