Local Building Materials: Affordable Strategy for Housing the Urban Poor in Nigeria

The rate of urbanization in Nigeria has witnessed tremendous increase in the last five decades. Census in the early Fifties showed that there were about 56 cities in the country and about 10.6 percent of the total population lived in these cities. This rose dramatically to 19.1 percent in 1963 and 24.5 percent in 1985. Today, the national population is estimated to be about 160 million with the urban population constituting about 60 percent. The phenomenal rise in population, number and size of our cities over the past few years have manifested in the acute shortage of dwelling units which resulted in overcrowding, high rents, poor urban living conditions, and low infrastructure services and indeed high crime rates. Various programs have been implemented to address housing problem. Despite all these interventions, Nigeria's housing problems still remain intractable. The paper recognizes that what Nigerians need to survive the wounds of near-homelessness include good governance, increased access to land, credit, affordable housing and environmentally sound and serviced human settlements. The paper examines the national housing need and housing provision, major constrain in delivery of low cost housing in Nigeria and conclude by recommending locally produced building materials and intermediate technology which can reduce construction cost by about 60 percent as an affordable strategy for construction of low cost housing in Nigeria.