The Association of Housing Corporations of Nigeria (AHCN), has called for a renewed collaboration with the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria (FMBN), to foster affordable housing and loan recovery.
The call was made during a courtesy visit by the AHCN to the FMBN on Wednesday in Abuja.
Dr. Victor Onukwugha, President of AHCN said that the visit was to highlight issues bothering on housing and rub minds on possible ways of further improving the housing situation in Nigeria.
He reiterated that the major objective of the association was to advise government on housing policies, projects and programmes and ensure increased availability of houses in Nigeria.
Onukwugha said that the objective had become a herculean task as various efforts made by successive governments had not yielded desired results that could adequately address the increasingly affordable housing shortages.
He said that the association was concerned with the high cost of housing units not affordable to majority of Nigerians and was committed to developing affordable housing through the use of local building materials.
Onukwugha therefore called for a renewed efforts of the collaborative body codenamed FMBN, AHCN and NBRRI Stakeholders Collaboration on Decent and Affordable Housing set up to address affordability through the use of local building materials to provide avenue for people to be housed.
He noted that the association attempted to structure a N500 billion revolving housing intervention fund from CBN to facilitate mass housing construction in Nigeria but inadequate database, especially on off-takers, has affected and limits access to housing finance for development.
He noted that the AHCN has embarked on-the-site training and education of professional and artisans to ensure quality delivery of houses devoid of creating a sub-standard environment and eliminate incidences of the collapse of building and loss of lives and called on FMBN to send its technical staff that supervise and inspects funded projects of developers to the training.
Onukwugha stated that the AHCN would assist in loans recovery from some of its member organizations that are indebted to FMBN.
Responding, the Managing director of FMBN, Arc. Ahmed Musa Dangiwa thanked the delegation of the Association for the visit and noted that such collaboration and many more are required to make the housing sector more effective and efficient.
Dangiwa said that housing corporations needed to do more and that the FMBN was happy to hear that AHCN was willing to assist in loan recovery and broker challenges of off-takers.
He applauded the on-the-site training programme of the Association for professional that supervise projects on site which he said would assist to prevent sub-standard housing production in the country and that the FMBN would be willing to partner with the association to assist in monitoring projects funded by it.
Dangiwa advised the AHCN as a body to always be concerned about the quality of houses being put in the market and ensure that quality of houses developed by its members are not compromised.
He noted that FMBN was willing to work with housing corporations in all the states and that loans have been approved for estate development in some states and noted that the development could not take off because some of these state governments reneged on their promises to provide infrastructures to the estate to make the houses affordable.
