**2.2 History of public housing programmes in Nigeria**

This section examines the trajectory of different housing initiatives in Nigeria and that despite these laudable programmes public housing delivery is beset with a number of challenges with has compromised the quality and quantity of housing delivered in Nigeria.

The international urban housing situations of the bulk of urban dwellers have continued to wane in both measurable and qualitative footings. (United Nations Human Settlement Programme [21] this trend has been bothersome and has continued to stimulate and contest ideas around different housing provision approaches over the last four decades, for periods discussed below. The involvement of the public sector in housing in Nigeria has been more of policy formulation than housing delivery. Below is step by step account on efforts by the government to provide housing in Nigeria.

The pre-independence era marked the first effort towards housing delivery in Nigeria. This marked the beginning of the Government Residential areas known as GRAs, where houses were built to provide adequate comfort for the residents as the "housing forms and spatial patterns of the GRAs reflected the English nostalgia for the garden city" ([22], p. 3). However, following the pre-independence era is the Post-independence Housing Era**,** 1960-1972. In this era, there was no marked difference in the provision of housing during the pre-independence era which was characterized by colonial government. In the Post-independence Housing Era**,** 1960-1972 [23] housing units in the government reservation areas (GRA) formally occupied by the colonialist became the abode of the new Nigerian administrative and political elites without any form of objection by these elites [24]. In the post –Independence era, the National Development plans were proposed which are discussed below:

The First National Development Plan (1962-1968) was launched to cater for the provision of 61,000 housing units, of which only a total number of 500 housing units were constructed by the Federal Government, which ended as a result of the civil war. Consequently, the second national development plan was initiated in

#### *Housing Challenges in Nigeria DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.99263*

(1971-1974) to cater for 59,000 low-cost housing again 7,080 housing units were built. Reasons offered for the failure are insufficient planning and formation, insufficient funding, errors in execution, under-pricing and costing etc. [22].

In order to provide housing to cater for the need of the Nigerian populace the Third National Development Plan (1975-1980) was launched. Here 202,000 lowcost housing units principally for the low income groups were to be provided, in all 28,000 housing units were delivered [25]. This then gave rise to the Fourth National Development Plan (1981-1985) which was embarked upon by the Civilian government. Only 23.6% of the initially intended 160,000 housing units were built [26] as a result of corruption, politicization and uncooperative attitude of state executives [27]. Following the post –Independence era is the Post Second Republic till present, it was characterized by the following periods. Military Governments (1986-1999) and Civilian Governments (1999-to date). The military government embarked on housing delivery efforts of delivering 121,000 housing units across the federation, 5,500 units were delivered, which was brought to a halt by an inauguration of a democratically elected government [28].

Following the election of a democratically elected administration in May 1999, the Federal Ministry of Works and Housing (FMWH) and several state governments indicated their willingness to participate in housing programs [29]. As a result, in 1999, the National Housing and Urban Development Policy was established to provide an additional 10,271 housing units through a public-private partnership and 4,440 housing units were provided under a public-private partnership [28]. Following the inauguration of a new civilian government on May 29, 2011, a variety of housing interventions/programs were implemented in the federal capital area, with a focus on public-private partnerships (PPPs), with the goal of providing (**Table 1**):


The Nigerian Government again set out to remedy the challenges of housing delivery within different states in the country by engaging with PPP (Public-Private Partnership) or through Federal Housing Corporations (FHA). Here, deliveries were made of some prototype housing programmes at the state and federal level respectively where 10 completed luxury town houses in Lagos State were provided by public-private partnership and 2&3 bedroom bungalows in Kaduna State were built by Federal Housing Authority (FHA) amongst others. In spite of the government efforts in this direction, to deliver on intended number of housing units, the problem of housing delivery remain insurmountable as unimpressive results have been recorded in the provision of housing in Nigeria, despite huge allocations of money to the housing sector in the National Development Plans as discussed earlier [30–32].

## **2.3 Challenges of different types of housing delivery in Nigeria**

In Nigeria, the delivery of housing is provided by both formal and informal sectors, houses provided by both the public and private sector are regarded as formal


#### **Table 1.**

*Overview of housing provision in Nigeria (pre- Independence- to date).*

#### *Housing Challenges in Nigeria DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.99263*

sector housing while those built or delivered by individuals, co-operatives, families or through community development efforts that to not comply to official building standards are referred to as informal sector housing

In Nigeria, according to [25] the majority of housing provision is executed by the private sector. Here 90% houses delivered are by individuals (self-built) and this signifies a high proportion of housing units produced by individuals. However, housing delivered by organized formal private sector, as well as the state (real estate developers) are insignificant. In Nigeria, many households in the urban areas are characterized by a mix of mix of middle-income earners and low-income earners [7, 33]. The range of socio-economic classes present in cities echoes the diversity of housing types delivered within Nigeria cities. This means that people with middle income to the lower income earners live in rented, informal low quality houses, while high income earners occupy luxury owner-occupied housing [34]. This implies that notwithstanding all efforts made by the Nigeria populace at providing housing through private mechanisms, housing delivery in qualitative and quantitative terms remains a mirage and this is aggravated by the presence official standards that are alien to Nigerian culture [2, 7, 29, 35–37]. Housing development in some Nigeria states; Edo, Lagos, Delta, Bayelsa, and Imo is limited by local practices which further worsens the engagement of individuals in the process of housing delivery. This is because of certain demands made by the Community Development Association (CDA) in form of levies. These levies are all informal payments demanded by the (CDAs) from housing developers before they can commence building in addition to other formal payments made to the appropriate official agency to obtain building permits. Ezeanah [38] showed that large sums of money are collected from housebuilders before they are allowed to build houses, hence posing a great challenge to housing delivery within Edo and some other Nigeria states.

Moreover, the rental type of housing categorized as public and private is a type of house delivered in Nigeria and 80% of households in Nigeria live in the private rental houses [9, 29, 35, 36]. This type of housing is plagued with various issues such as issues of finance, poor building materials, and demands for high levies, bureaucratic bottlenecks, extensive importation of building materials and this accounts for housing shortages within the Nigeria shortages [7, 10, 37, 38]. Consequently, in Nigeria despite efforts made at delivering housing through both the formal and informal sector, the housing deficit in Nigeria is huge as there is still a housing shortfall of approximately 16 million.

While the private initiatives enabled more houses to be delivered, these private initiatives were limited by local practices that worsened the engagement of some individuals in Nigeria with the house building processes, thereby limiting the quantity of housing delivered within Nigeria. Therefore, housing delivered are usually not enough to meet with the demands of housing in Nigeria with a shortfall of approximately 16 million housing units.
