Nigerian government participation in housing: 1970–1980

Abstract

The oil boom period in Nigeria accentuated rapid urbanisation as well as the proliferation of overcrowded “slums” and informal human settlements on the fringes of the big cities. Furthermore, the Federal Government for the first time adopted a national policy in which the provision of mass housing “for the lowincome households” featured prominently. Public policy and programmes, however, defined the country's housing problems mainly in terms of numerical shortages and physical standards and proceeded to attempt to meet these “quantitative and qualitative” deficiencies centrally. The aim of this paper is to briefly document the conventional mass housing approach deliberately adopted as a public policy in Nigeria during the period 1970–1980. The consequences of the espousal and implementation of this policy option, which was based on the assumption that only the government had the instrumentalities and competence to “house the masses”, are also examined. In 1970, Nigeria's urban population was estimated as 16.3% of the total population. This rose to about 20.2% in 1980. The country's Third National Development Plan (1975–1980), however, noted that the housing problem was essentially an urban one during the period of 1970–1980. Although almost no statistics have been, or are, available with regards to the quantity and quality of the housing stock in Nigeria, Table 1 gives an indication of the housing situation in 10 selected urban centres in 1972–1973. The decade 1970–1980 started with both the Federal and State governments according very low priority to the housing sector in their Development Plans. The advent of the oil boom era (1973–1976), however, changed this. The tremendous increase in revenues as a result of this led to a greater public intervention in the housing sector. A series of actions, programmes, reorganisation and creation of institutional frameworks and policies which had a direct impact on housing supply throughout the country was taken by both the Federal and State governments. This paper notes that amongst the major factors that were responsible for the ineffectiveness of public policy and programmes, two stood out prominently. These were: lack of incentives for the private sector to participate actively in the housing sector; and, the inadequacy of mortgage finance institutions in Nigeria.