By Franca Ofili
The Minister of Works and Housing, Mr Babatunde Fashola, has reiterated the commitment of the Federal Government to the National Housing Scheme to address the country’s housing deficit.
Fashola said this in Abuja on Tuesday during the unveiling of prefabricated assembly and installation building facility in Kubwa.
Prefabrication is the practice of assembling components of a structure in a factory or other manufacturing site, and transporting completed components to the construction site.
He said that this commitment informed the use of cooperatives in housing because it had been used to achieve a lot in the market place, agriculture and transportation sectors.
Fashola said that cooperative associations are found in the local, state and federal levels.
He said that the scheme was to integrate Nigerians operating in the informal sector of the economy into the National Housing Fund (NHF) scheme.
“The scheme enables a cooperative society that has acquired a plot of land with building approval to develop houses for allocation to its members,’’ Fashola said.
According to him, housing and consumers credit is the major agenda of the administration for its next levels.
He said that the country needed the new innovation to address its housing deficit.
“Nigeria cannot continue to build houses using same style because lot of things have changed, so we need to adopt new innovations,’’ Fashola said.
He said that the government has set up a team to go round to audit and know how many houses that are not occupied in the country.
Fashola said that the result of the findings would determine the kind of houses Nigerians preferred as such would enable the government to properly address housing deficits.
He said that the estimated housing deficit of more than 17 million units for the country had no source.
“I have tried to find out the source of the figure but did not, what the figure shows is that half of Nigerian population are homeless which is not true,’’ Fashola said.
He advised the Managing Director the company, Mr Hakeem Shagaya, to roll out prefabricated assembly project by educating Nigerians on the importance of using such material for building.
Fashola said that government would support the company to expand the project.
Shagaya said that the company’s objective was to solve the housing deficit in the country by providing an alternative solution.
He said that project involved making prefabricated housing a viable alternative to the brick houses which Nigerians are used to.
“We provide services in fabricated homes, fabricated log homes, modular building and all kinds of building construction services,’’ Shagaya said. (NAN)