By JUDE NJOKU & CHRIS OCHAYI

Thirty-one years after Alhaji Lateef Kayode Jakande left office as the first civilian governor of Lagos State, his legacies in the housing sector are still speaking for him. Although most of the houses built by Jakande are today in distressed conditions due mainly to lack of maintenance culture, they are still housing many Lagosians.

Only last week, quantity surveyors called on the three tiers of government to adopt the Jakande housing model if the dream of reducing the housing deficit currently put at a staggering 17 million units would be actualised.

President of the Quantity Surveyors Registration Board of Nigeria, QSRBN, Mallam Hussaini Adamu Dikko who spoke for the construction cost experts at the 4th Building and Construction Economic Roundtable, BCERT, organised by the regulatory body, advised the governments to study and improve on the approach adopted by Alhaji Jakande, which worked well in Lagos State.

He canvassed the development of a master plan that will consider the multi-faceted ramifications and the various perspectives to home ownership. Dikko advocated that a cost- effective methodology for producing low cost houses should be part of our master plan for providing new homes for Nigerians within the shortest possible time.

Speaking on the theme of the conference – Developing a master plan on new homes for Nigerians – The critical success factors, Dikko suggested that the “provision of housing for the low-income and even the no-income citizens of Nigeria should be the direct social responsibility of government because these are the most vulnerable and greatest victims of the high level of income inequalities in our socio- economic landscape.

“The profit-making motive and mentality of the private real estate developer makes it evidently inadvisable for government to ever contemplate assigning the role of providing homes to low-income and no-income citizens to the private estate developers without strict monitoring and supervision.

There should be an intervention, fund for the housing sector similar to what was done for the Aviation, Textile, Education and other sectors so that cheap fund can be made available to housing developers at less than five percent interest rate per annum with a condition that the prices of houses sold by the benefiting developers should crash to less than 40 percent of their current offer prices.

The details should be worked out by the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria which should be the managers of this Intervention Fund,” the QSRBN president said. Meanwhile, the Federal Government has unveiled plans to develop a roadmap for the housing and urban development sector. The road outlines the key initiatives and sets of actions to be undertaken over the next 30 years.

President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan who disclosed this while declaring BCERT4 open, said the roadmap which covers from 2014-2043 will take the sector to the next level

Represented by the Minister of Housing and Urban Development, Mrs Akon Ayakenyi, Dr. Jonathan said; “as a people-oriented Government, committed to the enhancement of the welfare aand well-being of our people, we have kept faith with this constitutional injunction by placing affordable housing delivery at the epicenter of public policy since the inception of this administration in 2011”.

“We cannot bridge the housing deficit in Nigeria without addressing the underlying factors that have militated against the development of the housing and urban development sector over the years. We  have also recognised that we cannot bridge the housing deficit in Nigeria without addressing the underlying factors that have militated against the development of the housing and urban development sector over the years,” he said.

The President said his administration has place in place, the enabling policies, plans, and strategies to re-invigorate the sector. “We are delighted that through these interventions, the housing and urban development sector is gradually being repositioned and transformed to enable us harness its potentials for sustainable national development.

“The importance of consolidating on the present gains cannot be over-emphasised. To this end, we shall continue to focus on four areas of priority concern to ensure sustained transformation of the housing and urban development sector.

The president promised that his administration will continue to collaborate and partner with all stakeholders who share in our vision of a transformed housing and urban development sector, with an enhanced capacity to contribute exponentially to the Gross Domestic Product, GDP.