A real estate economist, Mr Benjamin Onigbinde, has criticized the Federal Government’s projection of delivering 20,000 housing units yearly, labelling it unrealistic due to the insufficient allocation in Nigeria’s 2025 housing budget.
In an interview with THE WHISTLER on Monday, Onigbinde, who is the Chief Executive Officer of Sigvent Property Trust Limited, expressed concerns over the low level of financial commitment to the housing sector.
According to him, the N88.14bn allocated to housing out of the N49.7tn 2025 budget is inadequate, especially in the face of rising building costs.
Recall that President Bola Tinubu had on February 28 signed an N54.99tn budget into law, and the Federal Ministry of Housing and Urban Development later secured an additional N50bn, which surged its allocation for the year to N138.14bn.
The Minister of Housing and Urban Development, Architect Ahmed Musa Dangiwa, had in 2024 disclosed that Nigeria required about N5.5tn annually to build 55,000 housing units every year to close the current housing deficits in the next 10 years.
However, Onigbide told THE WHISTLER that the success of housing projects depends largely on two factors: the percentage of the allocated budget that is released and the timing of its release.
“By the nature of the housing industry, it takes time to complete a project such as housing development. So, a delay in releasing funds slows down progress, he said.”
Looking at the performance of the 2024 budget, Onigbinde noted that while the implementation was “averagely good,” the government’s goal of delivering 20,000 affordable housing units yearly could not be achieved.
He said, “Give and take, the budget performance is averagely good, although the focus of delivering 20,000 affordable housing units a year cannot be achieved.
“Interestingly, only N88.14bn out of N49.7tn was allocated to the housing sector, which is significantly low in the sense of increasing the cost of building construction materials, which may reduce the number of housing deliveries in the year 2025.”
He attributed this failure to ineffective policy implementation and the rapidly increasing cost of building materials.
Onigbinde, however, sees a path forward through the adoption of innovative building technologies.
He advocated more cost-effective options, such as compressed earth bricks, which he described as both cheaper and sustainable.
“It has taken such a long time to embrace compressed earth bricks technology,” he said, pointing out the need for immediate action to address the affordability crisis in housing delivery.
Onigbinde urged the government to align its policies with realistic budgetary allocations and to embrace new technologies that can reduce construction costs while meeting the urgent demand for housing in Nigeria.
