Estate Practitioners Decry Lack Of Houses

Worried by the level of backwardness in housing provision across Nigeria,  professionals in the real estate sector have urged governments at various levels to declare a state of emergency in the housing sector to make housing affordable and available for Nigerians.

They have agreed that the housing industry in the country has not received much attention and that not much achievement has been recorded, where as housing should have been taken as a service to the people.

Speaking in an interaction with journalists, Mr Hyacinth Oseji said that the desire to make a mark in the provision of housing made him and his outfit to introduce various programmes that will gurantee house ownership.

Oseji who was the best graduating student of the Rivers State University of Science and Technology (RSUST) in the Faculty of Environmental Sciences in 1990, and a Fellow of the Nigerian Institution of Estate Surveyors and Valuers (NIESV) said that this outfit OSAS and OSEJI has done so much already in terms of providing both commercial and residential housing.

“We have an investment arm of our firm that handles that aspect of our business, and our plan in the near future is to go into providing mass housing in Abuja, Lagos and Port Harcourt to cater for low income earners, and I urge governments in various states to see this as a priority and service to the people”, he said.

Towing the part of Oseji, Mr Patunola Ajayi, an estate surveyor and valuer, in his submission posited that housing demand is on the increase, but that there is no good housing for the teeming population.

He said there are 20 million deficient houses across the country, but that no body seems to be doing anything about it, and that such situation alone is enough for government to declare a state of emergency in housing, to provide housing for those that cannot afford it.

Corlins Walter