Babatunde Fashola Refutes Reports of 17m Housing Deficit

The outgoing Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, in a statement on Monday May 15, refuted reports that more than 17 million Nigerians are homeless. Although he admitted that the Data used for the report was extracted from the preface of the 2012 National Housing Policy report, Fashola maintained that the Data was “baseless and unverifiable.”

According to the statement issued by the Minister’s Special Adviser on Communication, Hakeem Bello, the former Lagos state Governor made the remark at a roundtable session of African Ministers at the just concluded 42nd Annual General Meeting of Shelter Afrique, a pan-African bank, tagged, “The Data Question – Which Are the Real Numbers? Harmonisation of Housing Market Data in Sub-Saharan Africa”.

He said the figure which sparked uproar among Nigerians was erroneously derived from a Housing Policy written by the Ministry, without a verifiable source of Data. He added that the Minister at the time could not provide a source for the Data. He explained that the Minister who admitted to the preface said it was prepared by aides, and the pressure of work did not allow sufficient vetting.

The statement partly read, “Everyone in Nigeria knows there is a 17m housing deficit in Nigeria. This Data has no credible source. It was in the preface to the 2012 National Housing Policy signed by the Minister then in charge of the Ministry of Housing, three years before I took office. I put a telephone call through to the Minister, who admitted to the preface but said it was prepared by aides and the pressure of work did not allow sufficient vetting. Needless to say, the Minister confirmed that the Data has no verifiable basis.”