Musa Dangiwa, the Minister of Housing and Urban Development has revealed that the Federal lawmakers have expressed support for the plan to increase the housing ministry’s yearly budget to a minimum of N500bn, starting with the 2025 budget cycle.

Dangiwa said this was following the ministry’s engagement with the National Assembly leadership while speaking at the 2024 Property and Environment Writers Association of Nigeria Conference in Lagos, themed, “Resolving Financial and Regulatory Challenges to Achieve the Renewed Hope Agenda in Housing”.

He said the development would allow the government to expand housing projects to cover the remaining 18 states and increase the unit counts per state from 250 to, at least, 500, as initially planned.

The minister, who was represented by the Director of Press and Public Relations at the Federal Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, Salisu Haiba, said, “We need to build approximately 550,000 units yearly over the next decade to close this gap. This will require about N5.5tn yearly.

“We are funding 12 Renewed Hope Estates from the N50bn 2023 Supplementary Budget. We also have an additional N27.2bn allocated in the 2024 budget to complete their infrastructure fully, while awaiting the 2025 budget to expand the programme to cover more of the remaining states.

“The three Renewed Hope Cities in FCT, Lagos, and Kano are all being funded through a PPP that the ministry signed with a consortium of developers for the delivery of 100,000 housing units nationwide.

Under this strategy, the developers source land and construction finance, while the government creates an enabling environment for them to deliver housing.”