The Nigerian Institution of Estate Surveyors and Valuers (NIESV), Lagos chapter, has urged President Muhammadu Buhari to separate the Ministry of Housing from that of Power and Works Ministries for effective performance.
Its Chairman, Mr Dotun Bamigboye, gave the advice in an interview on Thursday in Lagos.
Bamigboye said that the president should also appoint core professionals as ministers for the separate ministries to attain efficiency.
According to him, the Ministry of Housing is large enough to stand on its own, saying that attaching it to another ministry amounted to undermining the ministry.
He said the lingering housing deficit called for urgent need to separate the ministry to enable it to take holistic step toward finding a lasting solution to the housing challenges.
“The 17 million housing deficit of the country is an estimation being used for over 10 years now. Invariably, the nation’s housing deficit might have increased far above the estimation.
“If the housing deficit must be addressed, it is pertinent that the Ministry of Housing becomes a separate entity to make it more active,” he said.
Bamigboye, however, urged Housing Ministries at the Federal and State levels to adopt vertical development strategy, such as using little space of land to achieve more accommodations, to mitigate the deficit.
He said the model would improve housing provision rather than the current low cost designs, because the strategy could allow about 25 to 40 storey buildings in a small space of land.
“It is more cost effective, saves both human and material resources and can accommodate large number of people,” Bamigboye said.
He said that such scheme would be a better solution to housing problem, particularly for a country with an increasing population like Nigeria.
