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Maduka Nweke
Stakeholders in the built environment have tasked the Federal Government to take decisive steps that will help reduce the housing problems in the country.
The respondents who spoke to PropertyMart’s random interview on the current surge of population are in accord with the fact that if nothing is done urgently, the uninhabited would soon become hindrance to others.
Speaking on the rising population in Nigeria without commensurate housing to shelter them, Mr. Patrick Obi Ekwemozo, an estate developer in Onitsha, said that the way the unemployed are dangerous in the society is the same way the unsheltered are in the public. He said that it is a moral burden for Nigeria alone to have 2.55 per cent of the world’s population. According to him, government’s insensitivity to the problems of the masses is a time bomb waiting to detonate. “As people sleep anywhere and anyhow, it becomes more of a problem to track them in the event that any crime is committed in the society. Government should be in charge and really take charge. We fail to take serious things that should be taken seriously. Government has tended to be selective in actions. But actions that should better the lots of the society should not be selective,” he said.
In the same vein, Mr. Kabiru Olaitan, an architect practising in Lagos, said that government is not interested in solving housing problems. “This is why societal vices would continue to be on the increase. See the way government is handling the herdsmen onslaught against innocent citizens. Ordinarily, the herdsmen problems should have gotten a solution if it were in other climes. Here, because the problems affect certain groups of people, government seems to feel not perturbed. It is wrong. See how the population is increasing with nothing to manage it,”he said.
Recently Population Division of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, in its World Population Prospects 2019: Highlights, provides a comprehensive overview of global demographic patterns and prospects. The study concluded that the world’s population could reach its peak around the end of the current century, at a level of nearly 11 billion.
The report also confirmed that the world’s population is growing older due to increasing life expectancy and falling fertility levels, and that the number of countries experiencing a reduction in population size is growing. The resulting changes in the size, composition and distribution of the world’s population have important consequences for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the globally agreed targets for improving economic prosperity and social well-being while protecting the environment.
The new population projections indicate that nine countries will make up more than half the projected growth of the global population between now and 2050: India, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, the United Republic of Tanzania, Indonesia, Egypt and the United States of America (in descending order of the expected increase).
