By Musa Adamu
Abuja
The Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, has disclosed that the Federal Housing Authority built only 40,000 housing units in its 40 years of existence.
Discussing how Nigeria had not gotten its right in its attempt to provide houses for the citizens, he said among other things responsible for the failure thus far was plethora of designs adopted for mass housing scheme.
Addressing the stakeholders at the national summit on affordable housing yesterday in Abuja, the minister said his ministry’s internal reappraisal shows different designs of houses originated by different contractors that do not necessarily accord with the market needs and that were not attractive or affordable by the off-taking public.
He added that the appraisal of previous successful housing initiatives shows that they were limited in national acceptability because the single design concept did not take cultural diversity into consideration.
He said: “Quite aside from our reviews, emerging contemporary issues of Climate change, energy conservation necessities and collaboration with our development partners such as German Development Corporation (GIZ) necessitate that our building habits and methods must change, for energy efficiency and sustainability.
On what the present government would do correct the past failures, the minister informed that working with GIZ, government had developed guidelines for energy efficiency in the buildings which had been launched on June 16, 2016.
