Hope is in the air for investors as the federal government will be launching a national housing data centre expected to lay to rest speculations on figures relating to housing deficit, the volume and value of the deficit, and the size of the market opportunity.
Since 2006, when the United Nations agency for human settlements (UN-HABITAT) estimated the country’s housing deficit at 17 million units, every other figure that has been put forward has been captured as guesswork or estimates.
For instance, at an international housing event in Abuja, Ahmed Dangiwa, Nigeria’s housing and urban development minister, said, “to stem the national housing deficit put at 22 million units, the country will need to produce an average of 550,000 housing units per annum for the next 10 years. The financial outlay for this annual housing target is over N5.5 trillion per annum.”
At the same event, Matthew Ashimolowo, a pastor and real estate investor, cited a World Bank report which says, “Nigeria will need to construct around 700,000 housing units annually for the next 20 years to meet the needs of its growing population,” adding that to produce these units, the country requires an investment of N59 trillion over that period.
All the figures here come from the realm of speculation, which explains why the national housing data is a welcome development expected to harmonise these figures, giving investors and policymakers some level of comfort to make informed decisions.
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Investors and professionals in this sector have always expressed concerns about the lack of data that could guide decisions or provide clarity on the opportunities in this sector.
“Nigeria needs dependable data in its housing sector. One of the biggest problems we have is a lack of data. People keep quoting 17 million units because there is no other data to prove or disprove it. We talk of homes demolished, burnt, or new ones built, but who is taking record of the houses that are being built and the ones we are losing?” Erejuwa Gbadebo, managing director, Eko Development Limited, queried.
One of the things the housing industry should do, according to her, is to start taking stock of what is available—what house types are there and what do they exchange hands for? “There must be a way of capturing this data so that we have accurate numbers and should not continue to fight a battle we may have won or lost,” she advised.
Federal Ministry of Housing and Urban Development (FMHUD), which is coordinating the Data Centre, says it will be fully operational by December, a move expected to transform Nigeria’s housing and real estate policy landscape through credible, evidence-based data.
The centre is also expected to bring together key public and private stakeholders to harmonise housing statistics across the country, track progress in addressing the housing deficit, and provide accurate information, especially for investment decisions.
Taofeeq Olatinwo, chairman, Technical Committee, National Housing Data Programme (NHDP), was quoted as saying that the Data Centre will operate as a federated system, allowing states, Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs) to feed data at regular intervals into a unified national platform.
Olatinwo hopes that this approach will ensure both state-level disaggregation and national coordination, enabling the government to identify housing gaps, affordability trends, and emerging urban patterns.
“The target is for the Data Centre to go live in December 2025,” he said, assuring that “it will be a federated system with inputs from states, MDAs, and private developers at defined frequencies, in line with global standards.”
