A senior government official has revealed that Nigeria requires a staggering N60 trillion investment to construct mass housing projects capable of addressing the nation's severe accommodation shortage.
Call for Local Content in Construction
Idris Ali Sani, the Director of the Federal Department of Cooperatives, made this declaration during a summit held in Abuja on November 20, 2025. He explicitly stated that for stakeholders to meet the overwhelming demand for houses, a massive investment in developing local raw materials is non-negotiable.
Sani urged developers and the Federal Ministry of Housing and Urban Development to pivot away from imported building materials. "If the federal and state governments want to build affordable houses, they should forget the importation of building materials from China and concentrate on local content," he asserted. He confidently predicted that with this approach, no country could compete with Nigeria in constructing mass bungalows.
A Daunting Housing Deficit
The official highlighted the immense scale of the problem, pointing to Nigeria's 20 million homes deficit. He criticized the current pace of delivery, where approximately 10,000 units are built annually, describing it as grossly inadequate. "We have a long way to go to deplete the housing stocks," Sani admitted, emphasizing the urgent need for a more aggressive and scalable strategy.
Echoing the need for a strategic shift, the summit's Convener, Dr. Saheed K.Y. Adelakun, emphasized that while government agencies are leading the drive for affordable housing, the focus must be on cost reduction and building the types of homes people actually want.
"We are ready to bring critical stakeholders together to brainstorm and offer them opportunities to operate to reduce the cost of houses by 50 per cent," Dr. Adelakun stated. He further stressed the necessity of establishing a robust savings system to make housing accessible to ordinary citizens.
The consensus from the Abuja summit is clear: overcoming Nigeria's housing crisis demands a dual approach of massive financial investment and a decisive turn towards local material innovation to make homes truly affordable for the populace.
