The Minister of Lands, Housing and Urban Development, Mrs Akon Eyakenyi, says inaccessibility to land and high cost of land titling have hindered  the ministry’s efforts to deliver houses to Nigerians.
Eyakenyi made the statement at the 2014 Ministerial Platform, which held in Abuja yesterday.
She said that the ministry was working in partnership with the Presidential Technical Committee on Land Reform and other stakeholders to address the plethora of issues in land administration and management.
According to her, the aim is to ensure that land owners have secured titles and bankable assets.
Eyakenyi said the committee had developed and produced a draft  on Land Use Act Regulations.
“Discussions are ongoing with state governors to reduce the cost of land title applications and turnaround time to approve land applications in order to bring down the prices of houses for the citizenry.
“A Ministerial Committee was also established to undertake the inventory and auditing of all federal lands and landed property.
“The objective is to update our database on the status of all federal lands in the country in order to free under-utilised lands for housing development and optimise the use of all landed property.
“In addition, efforts were intensified to update and upgrade the land data-base management /processing system in the country through the federal land information system,’’ she said.
The minister said this would help to identify lands that were not in use while making land allocation process easy.
She said that a total of 3,798 certificates of occupancy were granted nationwide from 2010 to 2014, while  1,756 number of consents were granted for the transfer of land titles.
She added that a total number of 3,787 of serviced plots were created through the ministry.
She said that the ministry had commenced the process of issuing certificates of occupancy in respect of the 635 core assets of the successor companies of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria.
She said the core assets belonged to 11 electric power distribution companies in Abuja, Benin, Eko, Enugu, Ibadan ,Ikeja, Jos, Kaduna, Kano ,Port-Harcout and Yola.
Eyakenyi said that the ministry had developed a framework for conducting a National Housing Survey to establish whether Nigerians were adequately housed or not.
She said the survey would  help to establish the actual number of housing deficit in the country instead of relying on forecast while  addressing the concerns of the housing and urban development sector.
She said the government was working out ways to provide affordable housing for Nigerians and that a significant development was the adoption of alternative building technologies and construction methods in some projects.
Eyakenyi said the aim was to improve the speed of construction and  reduce the overall cost of construction.
She said that mortgage access for the informal sector under the ministry was flourishing as 935 registered cooperative societies with 18,397 members, whose contributions stood at N133, 70 million, had been registered.
She said that the 300 housing units financed under the scheme had been developed.
She said efforts were being made to harness other sources of funds in support of a sustainable mortgage finance system, using unclaimed dividends, pension funds; dormant accounts, among others. (NAN)