Nigeria has 16 Million Homeless People - Former Governor

A former governor of Lagos State in southwestern Nigeria, Chief Lateef Jakande, has said that Nigeria had a housing shortage for 16 million inhabitants including those living in the streets.

Speaking at the closing ceremony of the 8th Lagos Housing Fair on Saturday in Lagos, Jakande urged the Nigerian federal and state governments to urgently address the shortage of housing in Nigeria through the provision of land and adequate funding.

The former governor, whose administration provided thousands of housing units at affordable prices in Lagos, noted that the major challenges militating against ownership of homes were land and funding.

”This country has enough land to go round. Government must do something to accelerate funding in housing,” he said.

Jakande said that the activities of the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria were not well publicized as a result of which most workers did not enjoy the accruable benefits.

He also said that workers were ignorant of the fact that they were entitled to loans after six months of contributing 2.5 percent of their salaries under the National Housing Fund.

He appealed to the Nigerian government to ”accelerate the provision of housing and make it a cardinal point to abolish homelessness”.

Source African Press Agency

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