The pioneer and leading nongovernmental organization housing advocacy platform in Africa, the Housing Development Advocacy Network (HDAN) has congratulated President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on the 64th independence anniversary of Nigeria.
This is contained in a statement by the Executive Director of the network, Barrister Festus Adebayo, and made available to newsmen in Abuja on Monday.
He also used the opportunity to call on the President to do more in the area of housing, saying HDAN would like to remind him of his manifesto as it relates to the housing sector.
According to the statement, inflation, cost of building materials, land access barrier as well as some obsolete laws that needed to be amended have become a barrier to affordable housing delivery in Nigeria.
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The Executive Director also used the opportunity to salute pioneer leaders of the housing industry who have laid the foundation that we are building on today.
He mentioned the late Professor Akin Mabogunje, the late Chief Engr S. O. Fadahunsi, the Late S.P.O Fortune Ebie, and many others too numerous to mention, who have contributed in one way or the other in laying the foundation of today’s housing sector in Nigeria.
Adebayo further mentioned that the legacies of these founding fathers in working with the government to establish the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria (FMBN), and Federal Housing Authority (FHA)among others, are the reasons why those leaders’ memory will continue to linger in our minds.
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HDAN then called on the stakeholders in the housing industry to put the interest of the country and the sector development as a priority. He also called for collaboration among them.
He also called on the stakeholders to drop the idea of personal interests, saying “The more this continues, the more difficult it is to achieve the housing sector of our dream.”
“This is not the time for politics about housing, it is time to be serious-minded and to be determined to get the government (the executive and the legislature) to do the right thing in the area of housing,” Barrister Adebayo concluded.