FOLLOWING the increasing population in Nigeria’s commercial capital city of Lagos, the President of the Nigerian Institute of Quantity Surveyors (NIQS), Mr. Agele Alufohai, and other renowned professionals in the industry have renewed the call for a long term mortgage financing and its acceptance by the masses.

The NIQS boss made this call during the FIG Working Week 2013 – Environment for Sustainability, held in Abuja Nigeria while speaking on the paper; “The Lagos State 2010 Mortgage Law and the Supply of Housing. Mr. Alufohai decried that the growth of the population in the metropolitan Lagos has assumed a geometrical proportion; the provision of urban infrastructure and housing to meet this demand is, not at commensurate level.

He stated that Lagos is the second most populous city in Africa after Cairo in Egypt and estimated to be the fastest growing city in Africa and the seventh fastest growing in the world with a population increase of about 600,000 persons per annum. Lagos population is growing ten times faster than New York and Los Angeles with grave implication for housing delivery. At its present growth rate, the United Nations had estimated that, Lagos state will be the third largest mega city in the world by the Year 2015 after Tokyo in Japan and Bombay in India.

Mr. Alufohai remarked that in view of the foregoing, the Federal government has set up the National Housing Fund (NHF) to provide mortgage finance to Nigerians through the Primary Mortgage Institutions set up across the country. Also the Lagos State government has also set a machinery in place to ensure sustainable housing delivery This scheme is designed to ensure that residents of the state irrespective of their level of income, be it low or medium, are able to buy houses, at affordable term. The objective of the state government is to show the way for private sector by investing in delivering the houses. The state government invested in building the structure and recovers the cost by spreading the payment over a period of 10 to 15 years.

The houses, he continued are built in categories of one, two and three bedrooms so that income earners of every category would benefit, taking the opportunity according to their capability. The payment system is also made easy in such a way that applicants only pay about 30 per cent of the cost to own the house and the remaining is paid over a period of 10 – 15 years. He urged stakeholders; the federal government other tiers of government, and private building developers to pursue and sustain the model to ease housing scarcity in the state.