Nigeria’s Housing Minister Seeks Constructional Amendment to Improve Housing Delivery
Nigeria’s minister of Housing and Urban Development Architect Ahmed Musa Dangiwa has advocated constitutional amendment to ensure urban and regional planning is placed on the concurrent list.
In the same vein, the minister also called for the enactment of a bill for the establishment of National Urban Observatory that would collect urban sector data for ease of urban and regional planning projects.
According to a statement signed by Badamasi Salisu Haiba, Director Information and Public Relations of the Ministry Sunday, Dangiwa outlined these policy approaches when he hosted the House of Representatives Commitee on Urban Development and Regional Planning who came on oversight visit to the Ministry.
He told the committee that his ministry is embarking on housing upgrade, sanitation, environmental protection, agricultural support, boreholes and solar powered street lights among others, aimed at enhancing the aesthetics and functional spaces that would impact the economy.
Accordingly, Dangiwa said some of the challenges affecting the implementation of urban development projects to include non availability of reliable human settlements data for planning purposes and inadequate policy back-ups.
Others he said are structural defects in country-wide reposition of urban planning and regional development sector for the benefit of all.
Similarly, the minister explained some of the activities of the ministry’s department of urban development and regional planning to include preparation of National Physical Development Plan, Preparation of Physical Development Plans, Preparation of Urban Resilience and Sustainability Plans.
He further stated that the department is also engaged in urban sector multilateral programmes that include executive board meetings of UN Habitat, which Nigeria is currently holding the chair as well as overseeing activities of the executive arm of Shelter Afrique.
He added that a development control directorate responsible for monitoring and control of development on federal government lands and estates as well as urban renewal and slums upgrade under within which technical needs assessment studies of slums in Nigerian cities were conducted.
Earlier, the chairman of the House of Representatives committee on Urban Development and Regional Planning, Abiante Awaji said his team was in the ministry to fulfill its oversight mandate in assessing performance, monitoring effective utilization of resources and identifying challenges with a view to ensuring service delivery that would impact the lives of the Nigerian citizens.