By Mimidoo Patrick
An urban planner and management specialist in the Department of Urban Development Planning in Nasarawa State University, Keffi, Dr. Daniel Adamu has urged the federal government to set up a body to manage assets recovered or confiscated by the anti-graft agencies in the country.
Adamu, who made the call during a telephone chat with Viewpoint Housing News in Abuja, noted that this would promote accountability of confiscated and recovered asserts across the federation.
This is even as he appealed to the federal government to inject funds into housing in the effort to lift the economy and create employment.
According to him, “as the coronavirus pandemic continues to impact the economy, especially the real estate sector, government need to invest into the sector to selvage the sector from total collapsed.
While advocating for the use of joint venture to bridge the housing gap in the country.
According to him, “I believe that such joint venture that will be of practical assistance to the industry and decision-makers, reinforce the need for cost-reducing approaches to planning and engineering practices for property developments.
He also said government need to set up a body to manage assets recovered or confiscated by the anti-graft agencies.
He added that so long as we don’t encourage the production of these materials locally, we will continue to experience these kinds of things, because somebody somewhere will determine how they should be sold.
“So the government must be deliberate about linkages between the manufacturers and the research institutions to ensure there is a buy-in into our local research to be able to mitigate the housing crisis.
“I think the affordability issue also comes to play because the economy itself is slow.
If the economy picks up and people are paid appropriately, believe me, sincerely, people will be able to afford the houses. When you look at it in terms of benchmarking, houses are not expensive here, the problem is affordability. So the economy has to be re-engineered so that the masses can afford houses. The benchmark for housing in Nigeria is not outrageous.
Speaking on mortgage, he said there was need for the government to develop the mortgage market because we have non-existing mortgage institutions.
He said, “All those stories about Federal Mortgage Bank and the primary mortgage institutions are not real because I don’t see them getting N2 billion or N3 billion per annum. So how can they support the mortgage market that will support the production of at least 100,000 houses minimum per annum especially in this era of COVID-19.
The lecture also noted that government need to address the issue of earnings and be deliberate about developing the mortgage market and standardizing housing.
