EXAMINATION OF THE NATURE OF HOUSING IN NIGERIA

Governments are assumed to be saddled with the responsibility of either providing the needed and necessary services or creating a conducive environment for the services to be provided. Among these services is housing which is a basic necessity of life. The influence of the financial sector is hardly felt in the building industry in Nigeria. To put it succinctly, housing finance through this sector has been negligible. However, workable policies on housing finance seem to be a long way off the entire polity. It is against this that this study examines the impact of mortgage financing on housing development in Nigeria. The study employed secondary data and a time series analysis for the period of 1992-2015, which were obtained from sources like the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). Ordinary Least Square method was adopted and urban population growth was used as the dependent variable, while microfinance bank loans to mortgage, primary mortgage Loans to mortgage, and Government allocation to housing, were slated as the independent variables. The finding of this study reveals that Microfinance Bank loans to mortgage have a negative impact on housing development, while primary mortgage loans to mortgage have a significant positive influence on housing development in the Nigeria. Also, the government allocation to housing shows that an insignificant positive relationship exists between government allocation to housing and housing development in Nigeria. Thus, the government and other major stakeholders in the housing industry should embark on massive enlightenment campaign on the need of housing provision as envisioned in the National Housing Policy.