No abstract

Housing finance in Nigeria is facing a lot of problems among which are inadequate mortgage finance, inaccessibility to other form of formal loans from other financial institutions due to stringent conditions attached to its access; urbanization brought about by ever increasing human population; and the economic recession being experienced in Nigeria. Housing development financing and shelter provision among the low and medium income groups become more critical because of lack of access to credit; and these groups constitute the vast majority of the urban households in Nigeria. There are no robust and pragmatic housing finance systems on ground. The reality on ground led to evolution of informal housing finance system of which thrift and credit cooperative is one. Against this background the paper examine the role played by the Federal University of Technology, Akure cooperative multi-purpose society in the provision of housing finance to its members, Secondary data were collected for this study through the use of structured questionnaire from 29.5% of its members. Secondary data were equally obtained from archival data of the society and analysed. The study revealed that majority of their members relied on collection of loans from the cooperative society for their housing development finance. The preferences for this form of finance were given as: ease of processing loan application; low interest rate charge on loan; and ease of amortization. The paper posits that government should intervene in housing finance through methods such as site and service scheme, provision of low interest loans with longer moratorium periods, and special political consideration and leverage be given to the housing need of low and medium income earners to ameliorate poverty among this group.

The question whether globalization and its corresponding impacts carry a blessing or curse in developing countries has been a controversial issue among both the scholars and the policymakers, against this background this study provided an empirical answer to the question whether globalisation is a curse or cure to industrial development in Nigeria between 1990 and 2019 within the framework of the Fully Modified Ordinary Least Squares (FMOLS) and Granger causality test. Consequently, the following principal findings emerged in this study. Firstly, both FDI inflows and trade openness which depict economic globalization had a negative relationship with industrial development respectively. Though, trade openness was significant while FDI inflows showed otherwise. In the same vein, a unidirectional causality ran from manufacturing value added to FDI inflows. However, no feedback relationship existed between trade openness and manufacturing value added. Therefore, this study submits that economic globalization is a curse to industrial development in Nigeria because the wave of economic globalization contributed a significant reduction in manufacturing value added in Nigeria in the last three decades. From these findings, the current wave of economic globalization could be a cure to industrial development in Nigeria, if only the policymakers in the country embark on policies that would drive the largest proportion of the inflows of FDI in the direction of manufacturing sub sector in the country. Similarly, all hands must be on deck by all the relevant stakeholders to ensure that manufactured products in Nigeria possesses value added quality to facilitate their competitiveness in the global market.