FG inspects housing projects, restates commitment to affordable housing

The federal government has inspected some of the ongoing housing projects across the country while restating its commitment to affordable housing for Nigerians.

The Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, Dr Marcus Ogunbiyi, made the commitment during a site visit to some of the housing projects of the ministry located at Dikko, Suleja, in Niger State and Karsana, Abuja.

He also explained that the ministry specially developed and built the Prototype Housing Scheme in Dikko, Suleja at affordable prices, according to a statement by Badamasi Salisu Haiba, Director Information and Public Relations at the ministry.

“The Dikko prototype housing has a total of 232 housing units comprising of 3-bedroom, 2-bedroom, and 1-bedroom semi-detached units, and was co-funded by the Federal Mortgage Bank (FMBN) and the Ministry, while that of Karsana comprises of 4 blocks of 4-1 bedroom flats, 4-3 bedroom flats and 16-2 bedroom flats,” he stated.

On the housing units at Dikko Suleja, he noted that a lot of work has gone into the project even though more needs to be done in the area of basic facilities such as schools and clinics to make the estate more habitable.

“Some of these things are not to be shouldered by the government. We would have a meeting with the directors to decide on what to do but for now land needs to be provided for a private sector man to start an elementary and secondary school, and for the clinic we can put up a building, make a preferred design and invite the private sector to run it,” he stated.

He also stated that the processes of awarding the contracts to build schools and health centres within the estate could take about six weeks, assuring that he and the ministers would provide the support and enabling environment for the departments to do the work on the ground in a few months’ time.

On the housing units in Karsana, the permanent secretary stressed the need to complete the units in no distant time, make them habitable and allocate them to people, pointing out that the aim of providing accommodation would only be achieved when people start living in the houses.

“We have already done the rescoping arrangements, it’s just for us to instruct the contractors to finish the rescoping based on the contract that has been awarded, then we would re-award the remaining work to the same contractor to finish up,” he added.