By Ahmed Idris
The Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Mr. Boss Mustapha, on Wednesday called for a comprehensive social housing roadmap to tackle the huge housing deficit in the country and entrench policy sustainability in the sector.
Speaking when he received board members of the Federal Housing Authority in his office in Abuja, Mustapha said provision of affordable and low-cost houses to citizens is a primary responsibility of government because it is a social investment that should ease housing challenges.
He said over the years this objective had not been realized because of policy somersaults by the successive administrations.
He, therefore, stressed that since government was a continuum, all developmental policies of the agency should be sustained and not discarded.
The SGF also reiterated the determination of the present administration to redress the huge seventeen million housing deficit, by ensuring that a million houses were built across the country every year. He assured that the administration would do the needful to accomplish the task.
He called on the management of the Federal Housing Authority to take stock and come up with a policy that would ensure that their assets generated commensurate revenue, and were not a burden.
He also applauded the productive efforts of Nigerians-in-Diaspora through their remittances to the economy. He therefore urged that these remittances could be invested in beautiful estates for them with a view to halting the problem of fraud and abuse of trust by their friends and relatives.
In his remarks, the chairman of the board, Senator Lawal Shuaibu, said they were in the office to brief the SGF on the activities and challenges of the agency and to seek for support and intervention in key areas of concern.
He said in the 45 years history of the agency, government had made huge investment of over a trillion naira in housing projects.
He lamented the challenge of poor budgetary funding and requested that states assist the agency with suitable lands where they could build and sell, and solicited for the amelioration of their estates ravaged by ecological problems.
He also requested the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federal to coordinate the diaspora city project.
