‘Nigeria’s mortgage system still very weak’
How can Nigeria overcome its infrastructural deficit problem? According to the National Integrated Infrastructure Masterplan (NIIM), Nigeria needs $290 billion in the next 30 years to be able to meet up with the global bench mark and that means we need an average of $10 billion annually for three decades. It is not just government alone that will lead in infrastructural growth, we need to get investors, we need to also engage our local capacity and deploy it into infrastructure development. As most of our houses in Abuja are privately owned, if you can hedge them against some money like a house valued at N150 million can be sold at N80 million and the money invested in other infrastructure, industry or in more houses, we will move on.
We need to release our tieddown capacity and potentials to ensure that we have money available for infrastructure. Locally we cannot afford to realize $10 billion dollars annually, but we can do a lot and then from either Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) or from some private engagement with foreign companies, we should be able to achieve the sum of a $10 billion dollars annually. We should deliberate in order to achieve infrastructure satisfaction.
There are many vacant houses across Abuja, is there still need for government to embark on mass housing to cope with the housing needs in Abuja?
The solution is for government to grow the economy and make it an economic issue as some of the houses unfortunately are built with laundered money. I think for some time we will continue to have houses that are empty. As long as we are still fighting corruption, but when things stabilize and when houses become economic ventures where people need to earn from those houses, there will not be empty houses. They will make sure that they bring them to affordable level for people to occupy them.
How can Nigeria’s housing need be met with the rising population and rural urban migration?
Grow the economy mainly by commoditizing housing. Housing is more a personal and traditional thing as you hardly find housing in towns now where you will hardly go. There are places where you have houses and nobody is occupying them, they are just for occasions. This is where the people are in need of houses and the houses are not there or they are not available despite the increasing demand for shelter. Houses should be commoditized for a buyer can buy a house and if he thinks he wants change, he can sell it and buy another one, if he is moving from one place to another or if he is moving out of Alhaji Murtala Aliyu, Mutawallen Gombe, a former Minister for State, Federal Ministry of Power and Mines, is the newly elected President of the Quantity Surveyors Registration Board (QSRB). In this exclusive interview, he said the $290 billion needed in the next 30 years to address Nigeria’s infrastructure is a great challenge to the government and investors. town, he can dispose of it and or Deba in Gombe, the people use the money to buy another use what is available. So it is and to do that, you need to also whether the economy can develop the economy. That is afford modernization. So I think why we encourage developers as we grow, the local contractors to develop mass houses, I do will grow. Because the demand not mean low cost houses, so will now force them to adjust, that when people move from automation has brought so one place to the other they can many dimensions as even the get a house of their standard traditional way of building will to occupy. Because it is not be through modern way of even about buying houses, it doing things; where people will is about availability. We are come and assemble houses, not talking of the triumph of instead of building with mortar access over ownership. How and sand, and in a few days the this should be commoditized, house will be ready. the economy should be grown and government should make it easy for people to have lands to build on and for developers to build houses for sale.
Another thing is to develop the mortgage market as it is weak. For instance, the Federal Mortgage Bank (FMB) still relies on budget from the Ministry of Works and Housing, FMB is surviving on budget, it is not very strong and that institution needs to be strengthened. And there is the backup, the Nigerian Mortgage Financing Company (NMFC) which has a lot of money and so people will be able to build and the finance companies can take over negotiation. People will find it easy to access soft loans because it will not be at the current banking lending rate, it will be a tax subsidized rate.
We have local contractors, how can they cope with modern trends - changing from analogue to digital, from manual to automation among others?
T h e modernisation will bring a lot of automation with another dimension. The truth is that if you remain rural, all your components will be rural and so if the mindset of Nigerians and their contractors is rural, the country will remain rural so if you are modernizing, you have to modernize your components. If you go to Abuja and Lagos in the contract areas, you will find that modern equipments were used. But if you go to Igabi in Kaduna
How can government achieve maximum output from budget policy and implementation?
As individuals try to use professionals in whatever they do in life, the same thing applies to the government. As in construction, if you use the wrong inputs, you don’t get the desired result and there are many risks involved. I call on government at various levels to use the services of quantity surveyors in planning their budgets as a means of having the correct benchmark in their budget process and implementation. If we do that, we will be able to reduce the failure in budget implementation and failure in tackling housing deficit.