Lagos State government has assured that despite setbacks, especially the looting of some of its projects by miscreants, it remains committed to meeting the housing needs of its over 20 million citizens, stressing that it will continue to forge ahead with delivering on its mandate.
Wasiu Akewusola, permanent secretary in the state’s Ministry of Housing, who gave this assurance on Tuesday, said the state government was also unwavering in its determination to meet the shelter demands of the people, which was why they were working out strategies to keep vandals and hoodlums out of ongoing schemes, just as they would step up their monitoring activities to ensure that those activities were completely eradicated.
As Nigeria’s economic capital, Lagos has a very large population with a dire housing situation. The state’s housing shortage, which is both qualitative and quantitative, is estimated at 3 million units that require building about 200,000 housing units yearly for the next 10 years to close.
A Pison Housing Company report on the ‘State of the Lagos Housing Market’ estimates that over 80 percent of Lagos residents live in rented accommodation, spending over 50 percent of their income on paying house rents.
As a response to this challenge, the state government, in addition to its public and private partnership (PPP) initiatives on housing provision, also embarks on housing schemes in various parts of the state with a view to providing housing for its people.
Some of these schemes are located in Ibeshe, Igbogbo, Agbowa, Odo Onosa and Ayandelu. During an inspection tour of these schemes Tuesday, Akewusola confirmed the readiness of the state government to deliver on its mandate in providing high quality shelter for the people.
He, however, called on community leaders and residents of adjourning properties to assist in securing government’s investment in these schemes, saying, “the security of the housing schemes constructed with taxpayers’ money should be a joint venture between the people and the government’’.
‘’The policing of these housing schemes that are yet to be delivered is best done by the immediate communities because of proximity and superior knowledge of the terrain of the area,’’ he pointed out, decrying a situation where uncompleted houses were vandalised by removing fixtures, transformers cannibalised and electric poles removed.
Beyond this, the permanent secretary noted that some criminals had embarked on illegal sand digging activities around ongoing projects in Ikorodu, thereby endangering the land structure of the area.
According to him, extensive illegal sand digging activities were being perpetrated by some people in Igbogbo 2B Scheme thereby damaging the land.
The implications of these activities, he said, were economic loss and setback, noting, “the replacement of these items and restoration where applicable will definitely have huge financial implications and also result in delay in delivering the homes to the prospective owners.’’
He enjoined community leaders and residents to take interest in vigilance and surveillance over these schemes by offering information to security agents. “Please, give immediate report of any suspicious persons or unlawful incident to the police or any other government security agents,” he appealed.
