Sustainable Housing Supply in Nigeria Through the Use of Indigenous and Composite Building Materials

Abstract

Housing is one of the basic necessities of life after food. The need and importance of housing to cater for the ever increasing urban population in Nigeria is causing serious challenges to urban dwellers and the government. The high cost of conventional building materials in Nigeria is making the government and the private sector to look for alternative sources of building materials locally, in order to, meet the housing needs of the ever-increasing population. The paper highlights the combination of the use of stabilized earth blocks as an indigenous material for construction and composite building materials in Nigeria, and further stressed that the sustainability of these materials will drastically ameliorate the shortage of housing in Nigeria. Recommendations were made as to how these indigenous and composite building materials can be used to meet the housing needs of majority of the both rural and urban dwellers in Nigeria.

Keywords: Building, Composite, Indigenous, Materials, Sustainability