Stakeholders in the built environment have tasked government of the federation to maintain consistency in the promulgation and implementation of policies as they regards housing issues.
The stakeholders aligned with a popular statement credited to the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Mr Boss Mustapha, who blamed the million of housing deficit in the country on policy somersaults from successive administrations.
Anthony Adinnih, a property developer that resides in Abuja said “when changes occur in policy of government, it affects policy makers. This in turns affects the developers and private investors who may not have taken note of the changes in their computation. This is wrong,”he said.
Also in her contribution, Mrs Rebecca Ofurhero advised the government to always consider the general public in the policy promulgation saying such will be better for all Nigerians. Mustapha said this in a statement by Director Press, OSGF, Andrew Uhwe, recently in Abuja, while receiving delegates from the Federal Housing Authority (FHA). He urged the FHA members to come up with a comprehensive social housing roadmap to tackle the huge housing deficit in the country and entrench policy sustainability in the sector. “The provision of affordable and low-cost houses to citizens is a primary responsibility of the government because it is a social investment that should ease housing challenges. But over the years this objective has not been realised because of policy somersaults by the successive administrations.
“Since government is a continuum, all developmental policies of the agency should be sustained and not discarded,’’ Mustapha said. The SGF reiterated the determination of the present administration to tackle the huge housing deficit, by ensuring that a million houses were built across the country every year.
He applauded the productive efforts of Nigerians in Diaspora through their remittances to the economy. He added that these remittances could be invested in beautiful estates for those in diaspora to halt the problem of fraud and abuse of trust by their friends and relatives.
Earlier, the Chairman of the Board, Senator Lawal Shuaibu, said the visit was to brief the SGF on activities and challenges of the agency and to seek for support and intervention in key areas of concern. He stressed that in the 45 years history of the FHA government had made huge investment of over a trillion of naira in housing projects.