The Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola on maintained that housing deficit does not exist in Nigeria.
Operators in the built environment as well as government officials had before now put the housing deficit in Nigeria at about 17 million.
But while speaking in Abuja at the inauguration of the Board of Directors of the Federal Housing Authority on Thursday, Fashola argued that the housing deficit claims had no scientific and logical basis.
He said, “There is something out there before we came in that Nigeria has housing deficit; it’s a lie.
“Unfortunately, it was a document that originated from this ministry in 2012. It has no scientific basis, nor logical basis; so ignore it.”
Fashola said the housing problem was an urban problem, stressing that people who rented houses in the urban centres had empty buildings in their villages.
“Whether in Lagos, Kaduna, Abuja or Ibadan, we see empty and unoccupied houses and we need to begin to understand this problem,” he said.
He said it was time to begin to think on how to unlock and bring the empty houses into the market.
