Factors Militating against the Contributions of Co-operative Societies to Sustainable Housing Provision in Ogun State, Nigeria

The past housing policies in Nigeria recognised housing co-operatives as a viable way of increasing the production of housing units. This recognition necessitates the identification of ways through which improvement in the housing delivery of co-operative societies could be achieved. The study aims to identify the factors militating against the contributions of co-operative societies in the delivery of housing and the influence of these factors on housing provision in the study area to optimise their housing delivery output. A review of relevant literature revealed a number of factors that were tested with the use of copies of the questionnaire administered on the respondents whose total number from each of the 52 co-operatives that responded to the study, as determined by proportionate sampling, summed up to 418. The data collected were analysed with the use of IBM SPSS (version 20) software. Severity index and mean weighted scores were used to rank the factors identified. The study showed that ten out of the eleven factors identified in the literature have a significant effect on housing provision and were ranked as follows: opportunism, corruption and greed; high cost of building materials; difficulty in getting finance; difficulty in accessing affordable land; lack of provision for technical support; and limited access to technical services. Others are unavailability of training institutions, lack of provision for logical and administrative support, unskilled leadership and lack of adequate provision for beneficial legislative and policy framework. Categorical regression analysis was carried out to determine the influence of these factors on housing provision components. The result showed that the unavailability of training institutions has the greatest influence on housing provision. In view of these findings, the study recommended the evolvement of policy statements that promote the mitigation of the ten factors; and that training institutions for members be made readily available to increase the housing production capacity of co-operative societies.