AN ASSESSMENT OF LOW INCOME HOUSING PROGRAMME IN NIGERIA (A case study of state low income housing in Kwara State)

CHAPTER ONE

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

 1.0 INTRODUCTION

Housing is paramount human existence as it ranks among the top three needs of man. Its provision has always been of great necessity to man as a unit of the environment housing has profound influence on the health efficiency, social behaviour, satisfaction and general welfare of the community. It is a reflection of the cultural, social and economic values of society and one of the best historical evidences of the civilization of a country (Olotuah, 2000)

  The provision of adequate housing in any country is very vita as housing is a stimulant of the national economy. Housing is a set of durable assets, which accounts for a high proportion of country’s wealth and on which households spend a substantial part of their income. It is for these reasons that housing has become a regular feature in economic, social and political debates often with highly charged emotional contents (Agbola 1998).

           In Nigeria, like in many other developing nations of the world housing problem are multi dimension. The problem of population explosion continuous influx of people from the rural to the urban centre, and the lack of basic infrastructure required for good standard of living have compounded housing problem over the years. Access to this basic need by the poor whose constitute the large percentage of the world population has remained a mirage and it needs to be critically addressed. Ogieto (1987) has observed that the disparity between the price and quantity of housing on the one hand, and the number of household and the money available to them to pay these prices in the other, constitute the central problem of housing. The cost at which houses reach the market goes a long way to determine affordability, where the unit cost of houses is abnormally high only a few people are able to afford the houses. According to Okupe the Windapo (2000) the gap between income and shelter cost in Nigeria is very wide. This has almost eliminated the low-income earners from the housing market. A panacea to the problem is the contribution of co-operative societies and private developers to housing finance whose activities, particularly in tertiary institutions, this paper focuses in towards facilitating improved accessibility level to housing finance by low-income earners in Nigeria