N’West leads in Buhari’s low income houses allocation

No fewer than 2,937 homes have been built under the National Housing Programme, a legacy project of the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.) regime, Sunday PUNCH reports.

The homes erected nationwide between 2016 and 2022 were part of the developmental agenda proposed to address housing challenges in Nigeria.

The residences constructed in three phases in 34 states except Lagos and Rivers were aimed at the erecting acceptable, accessible and affordable houses for low and middle class income earners.

Recall that the president during the electioneering campaign in 2015 promised to build 1 million houses per year as part of the government’s desire to provide affordable housing for its citizenry.

However, as of December 2022, a total of 2,056 housing units had been completed in Phase One, 881 in Phase Two, and none in Phase Three.

The Ministry of Works and Housing disclosed these in response to a Freedom of Information request from Sunday PUNCH.

The housing schemes comprise various semi-detached bungalows and condominiums.

The semi-detached bungalows are located in the northern states while both bungalows and condominiums are located in the southern states.

A one-bedroom sells for N7 million to N9 million, two bedrooms between N9 million to 12 million and three bedrooms between the range of N13 million to N16 million.

A region-by-region breakdown showed that North-West topped the list with Kaduna getting 128 housing units, Kano,121; Katsina, 126; Kebbi, 106; Jigawa, 111; Sokoto, 140 and Zamfara, 95; making a total of 827 housing units.

In North-Central, 703 homes were built with Benue having 132; Kogi, 116; Kwara, 120; Nasarawa, 116; Niger, 128 and Plateau, 91.

The North-East region, recovering from insurgency got 679 homes with Adamawa getting 126 homes; Bauchi, 140; Borno, 78; Gombe, 101; Taraba, 116 and Yobe, 118.

A total of 392 housing units were built in the South-West zone with Ekiti having 70; Ogun, 50; Ondo, 60; Osun, 60; and Oyo, 70.

In the South-South, 200 homes were completed with Akwa-Ibom getting 64 homes; Cross Rivers, 48; Delta, 28, Edo, 60 while Bayelsa State did not have any unit completed.

The South-East region got the lowest number of houses with Anambra getting 12 homes, Ebonyi, 22; Enugu, 38; Imo, 64 and none were built in Abia State, making a total of 136 homes.

According to the historical background of the programme on the ministry’s website, the Federal Government budgeted N35.6bn for the National Housing Programme in 2016.

In November 2016, the Ministry awarded N27.4bn worth of contracts to 542 contractors for the construction of 2,736 housing units.

In spite of this, about 3,199 houses remain uncompleted cumulatively.

Reacting, a housing expert, Festus Adebayo, stated that the number delivered remained very low and reflected the poor performance of the current administration.

He further encouraged family homes to take responsibility for providing affordable housing by subsidising house costs.

Adebayo said, “The number of houses delivered in eight years is not impressive. With the manifesto promised in 2015 and we could not get up to 5,000 houses, that is a poor performance.

“The figure is not impressive; the pricing is too expensive and the location is not okay. Sincerely, the idea of the Ministry of Works building homes in this century is obsolete. They are not supposed to be involved in the direct construction of houses.

“Family home funds have delivered over 15,000 housing units but it should consider the issue of pricing. The mandate of social housing must be sustained. They should take care of those in the lower cadre of the economy.”