Senator President, David Mark, rightly puts it: “Government is supposed to serve the most vulnerable of the society, the poorest of the society. So if government is not serving the poorest of the society, it is not yet government. Until the poorest amongst us is entitled to accommodation, then government is a long way away from serving the people whom it is to serve.”

Nigeria currently has a housing deficit which stands at over 17 million units, and a conservative benchmark cost for a house is $15,625 per unit.  The government would require a whopping $265.6 trillion to provide for this housing shortfall. Bearing in mind the current budgetary constraints of the government, it is practically impossible for it to exclusively take on this project and still have funds to attend to other sectors of the economy. This, therefore, calls for creative ways and sources to fund the housing scheme in the country.

It was therefore commendable when Senator Ben Ayade recently presented a bill to the National Assembly on Social Housing. The bill is primarily meant to “benefit the poor exclusively with hard penalties for offenders.”

In an interaction with journalists in Abuja last week, Chairman, Sub-Committee on Low Income Housing, Ezekiel Nya-Etok, commended Senator Ayade for initiating the bill, describing it as “the fastest moving bill in recent time.”

Nya-Etok said: “For the first time the word Social Housing is being mentioned. It is not just mentioned, it is a full chapter (chapter 8) in the present National Housing Policy. You also know that policy is only a road map, a declaration of intent; you also need the second aspect to give it the teeth to bite, and that is legislation. As we speak, there is a bill in the floor of the House called the Social Housing Bill. The bill aligned 100 percent with the Social Housing Policy. We were lucky that the executive and the legislature came together. It was a private bill and I want to commend the maturity of the Minister of Housing, who decided to call for the bill and also the Senate, which also agreed that they should reappraise the whole bill so that it works hand in hand with the Housing Policy. So today we have a bill that has been redefined in terms of social housing to agree with the policy.

“When we were doing the policy, where I was privileged to be the vice chairman, we discovered that Nigeria has a peculiar problem, so we had to define our own policy the Nigerian way. Instead of social housing being housing for the poor as it is generally known, we looked at Nigeria and say that the man on Grade Level 10 cannot afford a house so he needs to be assisted. We have redefined social housing as housing for no income earner, low income earner and lower medium income earner.”

The Social Housing Bill states: “The no-income group is defined as all persons whose income does not exceed the national average of 25 percent of the National Minimum Wage. The low-income group here is defined as all persons whose annual income exceeds the ‘no-income’ level, but does not exceed the National Minimum Wage and the lower-medium income group is here defined as all persons whose annual income exceeds the National Minimum Wage, but does not exceed four times the National Minimum Wage.”

Deputy Chairman of the Senate Committee on Housing and Urban Development, Senator Gbenga Ashafa, at a recent function in Abuja, assured that the upper legislative chamber was set to pass the bill to ensure the provision of 3.6 million houses to Nigerians annually.

Nigerians are, however, still not happy as regards why the bill is still hanging at the National Assembly. According to Ashafa, the process would be achieved through the construction of highly subsidised houses. He said the fund to subsidise the houses would be sourced from “dead money” that would be generated from certain areas with untapped finances.

“With the construction of 3.6 million housing units, millions of job opportunities would be created through the architects, surveyors, building engineers, masons and other artisans that would be engaged within the period. And that is the only way unemployment can be tackled,” Ashafa submitted.

On sources of funding, Nya-Etok said, “We must first understand the source and the scheme. The first source we need to consider is dormant account. Dormant account is money or an account that has not been operated for a certain length of time. When an account is dormant for the period of 10 to 20 years, what explanation do we give on that? It could be that the owner of the account has died and nobody knows about to it let alone claim it. Or it could be an account that belongs to somebody who is alive but cannot go back to touch that account. It will therefore be true to say that any account that has been dormant for the past 20 years has a question mark on it. If an account has been dormant for more than 10 years, let someone borrow it and invest it. So that in case someone comes to claim it, it was just borrowed and will be returned.

“Again if an account is dormant for over 20 years, let someone borrow it and invest and be a little more relaxed. We now say let that someone be the government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria who will guarantee the money. We now bring an idea of how to invest such fund.

“We said let us develop new housing schemes around the country based on principles that we will make sure that people repay the money.”

Other sources that can be used to finance the Social Housing Scheme (SHS), he said, entail s part of the pension fund which currently stands at billions of naira which are unutilised. This, according to him, could be deployed into the project and repaid within a number of years.

However, most Nigerians interviewed by Daily Independent in Abuja expressed disappointment by the inability of the legislators to hasten the passage of the bill for the President to ascent it into law considering its enormous benefit to the poor.

A senior civil servant, Obi Nwachukwu, said: “From my understanding of the Social Housing Bill, any member of the House who kicks against it or is responsible for the delay of passage of the bill should be regarded as anti-masses and should not be voted into any office again. This bill by my understanding is meant to benefit people that are struggling like us.

“Just like the way Nigerians stood up with one voice during the fuel subsidy issue early last year, it is my advice that Nigerians need to take a stand on this bill and mount pressure on the legislators to ensure that it is urgently passed into law.

“Look at me, as a senior civil servant, I cannot boast of having my own house and, as at now, if not by God’s intervention, I don’t know when I am going to get one. Therefore, I see this bill as the only saviour for me and even the younger generation of civil servants and other Nigerians to get our own houses.

“We are planning to mobilise Nigerians for a mass protest on this bill. The legislators must pass this bill without delay for them to have peace. The social housing will not only provide affordable and decent houses to the poor, it will also provide massive employment for the teeming unemployed in the country.

“Do you imagine how many builders, ion benders, block molders, cement sellers, and many people involved in the building industry that would get job when the massive social housing schemes are being undertaken in the country?”

He insisted that, Nigerians, including the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), civil society organisations (CSOs), and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) must speak out on the issue the way they did during the fuel subsidy crisis.