Housing sector can rapidly transform economy — Consultant
By Owoleye Oluwakayode
A mortgage consultant, Francis Onwuemele has said the housing sector holds the secret of turning around Nigeria’s economy and drastically tackles its security challenges because of the multiplier effect the sector holds.
In an interview with our Housing Correspondent, Onwuemele pointed out that the Nigerian mortgage the system is still very elementary.
“There are huge untapped opportunities in the sector of around 99.9per cent. You have a beautiful, very attractive population of 230 million people, and not only that, you have a very viable young age, over 60 to 70 per cent.
“That’s a 140 million ready-made market and what I am going to tell government now is this, create enabling opportunities for industries connected to the housing sector to spring. That will transform into automatic jobs creation.
“If Federal Government focuses on a policy of developing the housing sector alone, the government can revive this economy. This is one the thing they can do: Create industries to produce the nails, that could be almost 10-15 industries, creative industries to produce the roofing sheets, another 10-15 industries, creative industries to produce the cement and that could bring down the price substantially.
“Create industries to produce the doors, the nails, the keys, create an industry of artisans. I mean you are just creating employment opportunities. Those hopeless Nigerians are going to work in those places, not goats, not gorillas, not monkeys.
“As you create those opportunities for them, they are going to work there and they will produce components that will fit into the housing sector. The furniture maker, the Baba Suraju welder, you have produced jobs and you make up your mind to produce 400,000 or 200,000 housing units every year.
“Each component should have an industrial sector producing. People will work there. You produce the finished products. That’s where the beauty of commercialisation comes in, the finished products and then these things are given to Nigerians who are working including those in the building environment.
“The guys producing nails also need accommodation, those that are producing cement need accommodation, the guys producing doors need accommodation. You have built and you allocate to them.
“Even if you spend N500 billion doing that and the monthly mortgage is about N10-12 billion coming in, you can’t go wrong. They are not perishable products.
“As you pump in the money, Nigerians who are now working in the industries will get the accommodation and pay you back the mortgage.
“Let me tell you where it will fail. If after you pumped in the billions through policy development, and the mortgage money keeps coming in monthly and is mismanaged, that will go down the drains But, if it is properly managed, it will go back again. You can’t go wrong.
“You’ll find out that all the industrial sub-sectors that have been created because housing will keep multiplying itself and when it keeps multiplying itself who benefits?
“Our children who would have felt hopeless will now pick jobs, then you will give room for incredible creativity and I tell the government again that do you know that you can even tackle slums?
“Slums are the by-product of the hopelessness of the housing sector. Those guys don’t like to live in slums. Forget that when you get there they are smiling. They don’t like to live in slums but when you do this sector you can now tackle the slum.
“Professionals can tell you this is what we will do in this slum area; in six months we can move the guys away and this six months, we can build this value of houses, put them in and they will pay this amount of money.
“Everybody benefits. Society gets better, the roads are tarred, quality of life is improved, the young boys and young girls have jobs to do, and there is hope for a better tomorrow.”
