Business
REDAN Calls For Synergy Between Government, Private Developers
The President, Real Estate Developers Association (REDAN), Mr Olabode Afolayan, has called for a synergy between government and private developers to accelerate housing delivery programmes in the country.
Afolayan made the call on Tuesday in Abuja at the associations’ stakeholders’ forum: “Accelerating Housing Development in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT): Challenges and Prospects’’.
The president said that there was the need to take urgent steps to address the problem in view of the current realities on ground.
Afolayan said that housing supply still ranked low, when compared to the number of people in dire need of them.
According to him, the housing deficit is still more than 16 million units that will require about N53 trillion to bridge the gap at an average cost of N3.3 million per unit of housing.
“We cannot continue to pretend that the modes of operation of government and developers, off-takers, as well as all other stakeholders in the built industry do not require synergy,’’ he said.
Afolayan also decried the refusal of the banks to grant loans to developers, adding that their actions had inevitably denied the poor who were the target in the social housing scheme access to such facilities.
To this end, he said that the process of housing development beginning from land acquisition and the completion of the projects must be overhauled.
He said that the aim of the forum was to address inadequacies, expose operators and policy makers as well as strengthen the association’s commitment to housing delivery in the FCT and the country.
Speaking earlier, Malam Idris Suleiman, Chairman FCT Urban and Regional Planning Tribunal, said that the absence of the Land Use Act and inconclusive land policy were major challenges affecting the delivery of housing in the country.
Suleiman stated that the issue of land ownership between the government and the locals still persisted.
He also frowned at the situation, where land was given to private developers to construct mass housing only for them to resell at higher rate after a long time.