The Minister of Housing and Urban Development, Ahmed Dangiwa, has blasted the increasing unhealthy competition among professionals in the country’s housing sector.
He recently revealed that the bad habit has played a major role in the poor performance and inefficiency of the industry.
Speaking via the Head of Department, Public Building and Housing Development at the Ministry, Ubong Usoro Temitope, at a Luncheon organised by the Quantity Surveyors Registration Board of Nigeria (QSRBN), held recently in Abuja, he urged professionals and experts in the industry to overcome the desire to compete at all cost and focus on embracing collaboration.
According to him, the sector has always been notorious for harbouring professional aberrations, a lack of institutional coordination, and unfair rivalry among professionals, and such avoidable drawbacks will only continue to hinder the growth of the industry.
Ahmed revealed that if lingering problems like the delays experienced with project execution, inflated costs, and corruption don’t become a thing of the past, the public trust the sector lost a long time ago will never be recovered.
Stressing the need to regain the confidence of Nigerians to deliver quality infrastructure, he called for more disciplinary actions and a unified commitment to provide efficient and top-class infrastructure to fellow citizens.
“The built environment is too critical to national development for us to be working in silos. We must come together, collaborate, and uphold best practices to ensure we meet the infrastructure needs of our people,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Federal Government has announced plans to deliver over 20,000 affordable housing units across the country through the Public Private Partnership (PPP) funding mechanism.
Confirming that urban renewal and slum upgrading initiatives have commenced in 26 pilot locations, Ahmed Dangiwa said that the government is only starting with 20,000, and the plan is to extend it to hundreds of thousands in the near future.
“In the first phase, we plan to deliver over 20,000 housing units nationwide alongside scalable plans to extend this to hundreds of thousands more.
We target underserved Nigerians and enhance access to decent shelter. Urban renewal and slum upgrading projects.
In partnership with state governments, we have launched Insight to Slum Upgrading in 26 pilot sites to improve access to roads, potable water, sanitation, and renewable energy in informal settlements,” he added.
