Housing Deficit: Lawmakers Want FG to Dispose Houses under National Housing Programme

Udora Orizu in Abuja

The House of Representatives has called on the Federal Ministry of Works and Housing to earnestly begin the process of disposing of houses constructed under the National Housing Programme to most deserving Nigerians.

The House also mandated its Committee on Housing and Habitat to interface with the Ministry of Works and Housing to ensure compliance.

The resolutions followed the adoption of a motion sponsored by Hon. Mansur Manu Soro at the plenary yesterday.

Moving the motion, Soro noted that since 2015, Nigeria has been contending with over 15 million housing deficit, which requires about 150,000 houses to be built yearly to bridge the gap.

The lawmaker recalled that the National Housing Programme (phase I) was launched in January 2016 with the construction of 2,500 units of houses in the 36 states and the phase II of the programme was launched in 2018.

He said the House is aware of the investigation by a national daily which revealed that the Ministry of Works and Housing received N66 billion in 2016, N41 billion in 2017, N26.7billion in 2018, N34 billion in 2019 and N60.8 billion in 2020 budgets respectively, totaling N26 billion for the National Housing Programme.

The lawmaker said the House is also aware that nearly 4,000 houses have been completed and have remained unoccupied, adding that if not disposed to interested and deserving Nigerians, they may begin to wear out, a development that will not address the housing deficits in Nigeria.

Also at the plenary, the House, while adopting a motion sponsored by Hon. Chinedu Ogah, urged the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management to urgently mobilise relief materials to victims of flood disaster in Amagu, Item-Amagu, Echara, Enyimagu, Alike, and other major communities in Ikwo Local Government Area of Ebonyi State.

The lawmakers also urged the federal government to embark on immediate evacuation and resettlement of inhabitants of the affected communities to a temporary camp for Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs).