The Abuja International Housing Show has assisted over 5,000 ordinary Nigerians to own homes. At the event, you will meet the ones that are building for the poor, the ones that are building for the rich and so on.

This year’s show’s theme is: “Sustainable and Resilient Housing Solution for a Post-Pandemic World”. The problem of COVID-19 has made the whole world know the importance of housing. COVID-19 came with conditions like social distancing; it came with the conditions that you must wash your hands, and all these things have to do with housing. Putting a man, a wife and six children in a one-bedroom without any form of social distance is a problem; that is the reason why Bill Gates said that very soon you will see people dying in the streets of Africa because we don’t have a good housing system.

When they say wash your hands every five minutes, most of the people you’re telling to wash their hands don’t even have access to water; these are the issues that COVID-19 has exposed.

Now, as we meet at the Abuja International Housing Show, we chose that topic to discuss. What is the next agenda with housing following all the exposures that

COVID-19 has caused? What are the interventions the government should do? What are the innovations that we need to bring in that will make us make housing accessible, especially to those that need it? These are some of the issues we will look at.

Few days ago, the Minister for

Works and Housing said the figure of 17 million to 20 million housing deficit that has been quoted in the housing industry is not correct. Is this also going to be a major focus as you meet?

We have decided to bring the issue of data to the front burner of