Babatunde Fashola, minister of works and housing, says
landlords and property owners should adopt 3-month rent in advance against the
yearly upfront payment to improve affordable housing for Nigerians.
Fashola made the recommendation at the weekly state house
briefing in Abuja on Thursday.
Earlier in the month, the minister argued that public data
which pegged Nigeria’s housing deficit at 17 million had no scientific and
logical basis.
He had explained that inaccessible affordable homes are not
only based on high cost but also on the mode of payment.
At the briefing, the minister urged state governments to
intervene in rent management, stressing that it can be done through persuasion
or by intervention through state legislation.
He also said that Nigeria’s housing problem is more
prevalent in urban areas due to increased migration into major cities.
“As long as people have to pay three years rent from
salaries that are earned monthly in arrears, there will be the problem of
affordability but if you brought it to like three months in advance, there is
something still called salary advance in the private sector”, Fashola said.
“You will find many of the people who are in urban centres
like Abuja, Kano, Kaduna, Lagos, Owerri, Port Harcourt, Aba, Ibadan, Abeokuta
and those types of places seeking to squat with somebody or trying to rent a
house has an empty home in his village.
“So, if we understand it like that, then let us look at the
urban centres themselves. In the urban centres, you will see that there are
still empty houses, and you will then understand that we have to discuss
housing on two paradigms – ownership and rental – because no nation provides
full ownership for all of its citizens.”
“Most of the properties affected by this lack of occupation
belong to private people, so the government can’t go and take their properties,
but I think that by persuasion, by intervention through state legislation, we
can bridge some of this,” he added.
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