Addressing Urban Housing Shortage in Nigeria: From Diagnosis to Policy Prescription

Housing shortage in Nigeria is likened to a cankerworm that parasites the fabrics of development in cities. Deficit grows at an alarming rate from about 8 million in 1991 to over 16 million in 2015. Government’s numbers of policy and initiative programme meant to facilitate formal access to decent housing are no more guaranteed in the changing developing market. The problematic features and complex issues in urban housing parlance have hence resulted to the emergence of informality that boosts housing provision, nonetheless the inherent deficiencies in some outputs. The actors in the informal sectors also attribute the challenges confronting the existing informal strategies to both internal and external factors not far from policy that can improve quantity and quality of housing in cities. Hence, what is the nature of Nigerian urban housing provision structure and how can the existing housing provision strategies be improved to increase housing provision?.Using institutional theoretical approach (Structure- Agency), this study identifies the existing informal strategies. It will evaluate the event- sequences of the strategies within the context of factors of production (Land, Labour and Capital) in Lagos - the largest city in sub-Sahara Africa (SSA) and with high housing vulnerability. The interest and the ideology (motivating factors) will also be investigated from the informal providers. Lessons learnt from the analysis and synthesis of exiting housing instruments in similar developing countries will form a new policy framework. Consequently, the framework will be subjected to experts’ opinion (Delphi) towards a policy paradigm for the extension of provision in cities.