The federal government yesterday said it was set to provide more adequate and affordable housing for about 2, 000 families in Abuja.

The Minister of State for Works and Housing, Mu’azu Sambo, made the disclosure during an inspection of the Affordable Housing and Management Development Initiative in Gwagwalada, Abuja.

He said: “It is a fundamental priority of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration to provide decent and affordable houses for the teeming masses of Nigerians especially against the backdrop of rural-urban migration.”

Sambo pointed out that Nigeria’s population, which is about 200 million, had been projected to hit 400 million by 2050, explaining that the huge population would need affordable houses to live in.

“It may interest you to know that out of the 200 million Nigerians we have today, it is estimated that about half of that figure is living in the urban centres.

“It is the responsibility of any government, most especially the President Muhammadu Buhari’s led administration to make sure that affordable houses are provided for them,” he added.

He said that his decision to visit the project in his first outing as a minister was deliberate, stressing that if the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) gets it right, it would be a template that would be replicated all over the country.

“And our drive is to see how we can get it at the lowest cost possible,” he added.

The Head of Public Private Partnership of the ministry, Abimbola Asein, said the affordable housing initiative was sitting on 113 hectares of land to ensure shelter for Nigerians, especially the low and middle income earners.

Asein said the initiative was a public, private partnership programme to provide affordable houses for Nigerians.

“The first phase of the project which commenced in December 2021 is to put the infrastructure , roads and drainages in place which is about 25 per cent completed and we hope that when the houses are provided, they will be affordable to all Nigerians,” Asein stated.