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By Olanrewaju Oyedeji
Nigeria’s commercial nerve centre, Lagos, needs to build as much as 2.4million houses to bridge its current housing deficit but it is only doing some 1000 constructions annually, a new report has stated.
The report which is the outcome of months of field research carried out by the Roland Igbinoba Real Foundation for Housing and Urban Development, RIRFHUD, is billed to be presented to the public on April 29 at the Eko Hotel, Lagos.
Addressing a press conference on the subject in Lagos today, the convener and Executive Vice Chair of the Foundation, Mr. Roland Igbinoba explained that the foundation had done all that it could towards ensuring that both the process of preparing the report, as well as its final outcome has been as comprehensive and thorough-going as is possible.
According to him, the report, which is entitled ‘The State of the Lagos Housing Market Report 2016, and which is the second in the series, involved as many as 2,500 field researchers getting around the city and state in a massive data collection drive.
He stated that as a foundation they were satisfied with what they had come up with and reiterated the primacy of data in the housing and national development process.
Corroborating his view, a representative of one of the organisations that is collaborating with the Foundation in the project, Mr. Ronald Chagoury asserted that one of the principal challenges foreign investors in the housing sector had faced over the years had to do with getting reliable facts upon which to base their investment decisions. He testified that the production of the State of Housing Market Report, Volume 1 in 2009 had indeed gone a long way in filling the hitherto existing void and hoped that the current volume would even do even more in this regard.
Chairman of the Foundation and eminent environmentalist, Dr Newton Jibunoh remarked that it was very clear that Lagos was indeed the most vibrant city in the country. He explained that with this situation it was most important that the authorities pay very careful heed to the development of all of the infrastructure that the city and state needs, beginning with its housing needs.
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