Housing Affordability by Federal Civil Servants in Minna, Nigeria: Emerging Issues.

Abstract

In Nigeria, the 1999 constitution recognises housing as a fundamental human right; hence it is imperative that Nigerians have access to decent and comfortable accommodation at affordable costs. This study examined housing affordability by Federal Civil Servants in Minna by analysing the average annual emoluments of federal civil servants and the annual rental values of houses occupied by them, and subsequently established the percentage of annual income spent on rent. A total of 200 federal civil servants spread across all grade levels were sampled. Simple descriptive statistic, likert scale, relative index and pearson product moment correlation were used to analyse collected data. Findings showed that federal civil servants in the study area spend between 7.3% and 23.8% of their annual income on rents. The study also revealed that civil servants’ level of income having a relative index of 0.96 is the major factor influencing the choice of residential accommodation by federal civil servants in the study area. It further revealed a strong positive correlation between their annual income and rental values of residential properties occupied by them. The sampled respondents expressed varied levels of satisfaction with the houses they occupy, with as much as 59% being unsatisfied with their rented housing units; these were attributed to poor housing quality, small sizes of housing units and densely populated neighbourhoods, among others. Housing Affordability Index was also adopted and used to determine housing affordability levels in the study area. The study recommended a home ownership scheme to enable federal civil servants purchase or build their own houses and pay conveniently because all respondents desired to own their own houses.