It’s A False That 17m Nigerians Are Homeless – Fashola

The Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, on Monday, refuted reports that more than 17 million Nigerians are homeless.

Although he admitted the data used for the report was extracted from the preface of the 2012 National Housing Policy report, Fashola maintained that the data was “baseless and unverifiable.”

The minister, who likened the data source to “a house without an address”, lamented the fixation and binge on a supposed 17 million housing deficit by stakeholders who have no proof.

According to a statement issued by the minister’s special adviser on communication, Hakeem Bello, the former Lagos governor made the remark at a roundtable session of African ministers at the just concluded 42nd Annual General Meeting of Shelter Afrique, a pan-African bank, tagged, “The data question – which are the real numbers? harmonisation of housing market data in Sub-Saharan Africa”.

He said the figure which sparked uproar among Nigerians was erroneously derived from a housing policy written by the ministry without a verifiable source of data adding the minister at the time could not provide a source for the data.

He explained that the minister who admitted to the preface said it was prepared by aides and the pressure of work did not allow sufficient vetting.

The statement partly read, “Everyone in Nigeria knows there is a 17m housing deficit in Nigeria. This data has no credible source, but we are ready to assert it. Happily, I eventually found where it came from. It was in the preface to the 2012 National Housing Policy signed by the Minister then in charge of the Ministry of Housing, three years before I took office.