‘Nigerians can have affordable housing, if govt provides facilities’

AS Nigerians struggle to have roof over their heads, a non-profit organization, Shelter Origins, has urged the government to support affordable housing by providing infrastructure in project sites.

The Executive Director of Shelter Origins, Mr. Ezekiel Ojo who made the appeal maintained that Nigerians could have affordable housing units if government would provide land, electricity, road networks to connect city centre, and all hands must be on deck to achieve this in the country.

He called on the authorities concern to identify sincere private developers to drive affordable housing, adding, “affordable houses have to do with passion, and has to do with humanity.”

Ojo disclosed that group has constructed over 500 houses to accommodate displaced individuals in Abuja through a partnership arrangment with MTN Foundation, Cisco International, Union Bank of Nigeria, American Embassy, Larfarge and individuals to build affordable houses in FCT, Nasarawa and Plateau states.

He said over the years, they have been able to establish that prices of houses are highly exaggerated in Abuja and other cities in Nigeria. Ojo, pointed out that shelter Origins have built a two-bedroom apartment for N1.1million including facilities; two-bedroom flat for N1.3 million and two-bedroom unit for N3.5 million.

“We have also proved to the world that there are stages in building affordable housing units and today we can state categorically that low income houses can be possible in Abuja and major cities in the country.”

He said the term affordable developers and government agencies have wrongly used housing. For instance, “some property developers will tell you N20 million is an affordable apartment. Go to Federal Housing Authority, FHA, what they called ‘affordable’ most of them start from N50million and above.”

Ojo said it was on this direction that they decided to promote homeownership by providing decent and affordable houses leading to reduction of poverty in the country, adding, we are working to carry out the project in six geopolitical zones of Nigeria.”