Our Stand (63) —
Housing is widely recognized as a human right, yet Nigeria’s low-income households in particular struggle when it comes to finding adequate shelter that does not leave them in financial difficulty and this is due to lack of affordable housing, which is mostly caused by the prices of building materials that are used for construction.
Building materials play one of the most important role in the construction industry. These are those materials that are put together in the process of building or constructing structures, no field of engineering is possible without the use of these materials.
Building materials contribute greatly to the quality and cost of housing, from what is used in the foundation to the materials for roofing and finishing, while the building materials industry is an important contributor to the national economy of any country as its output oversees the rate and the quality of construction activities.
However, Jagboro and Owoeye (2004) and Aibinu and Jagboro (2002) noticed that increase in the prices of building materials has multiplier effects on the industry as it leads to fluctuation in construction costs and the eventual abandonment of projects.
Over the past years, there has been a drastic increase in the costs of building materials in Nigeria, and this development has threatened the performance of the construction sector. The cost of building materials stands as a significant threat to both the construction industry and aspiring home owners.
The common track at which prices of building materials are increasing in Nigeria is as a result of the combined effects of the high interest rates, devaluation of the Nigerian Naira, inflation, and non-effective distribution network of these materials.
Insinuations drawn from the conclusions on the implications of the rising costs of building materials are that, there is a possibility of a descending effect on the GDP in the nation’s economy and that the expectations of the government policy toward the realization of the program on “housing for all are no longer certain.
If the serving government can create policies that will reduce the anxiety on the use of imported building materials by encouraging research in the production of our locally made building materials. If developers can use good made in Nigerian products that are up to standard to construct affordable housing for the masses in dire need of them then Nigeria is at the verge of cropping off its housing deficit.
