Bridging 17 Million Housing Deficit, a Tough Task

–As FMBN Solicites Collective Efforts

The quest for bridging the housing deficits estimated at over 17 million houses at the cost of more than N60 trillion is a huge task that demands collaborative efforts between the Federal government and all stakeholders in the housing sector.

The Managing Director of the Federal of the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria (FMBN), Ahmed Musa Dangiwa declared this at the weekend in a chat with Journalists.

He was responding to questions on how the bank would assist to provide affordable mass housing to Nigerians. He said that the most important thing is to pursue the mandate of the bank which is to improve the mass housing stock of this nation, mass affordable housing for the people.

He noted that the previous administration had started improving on this but regretted that some of the loans given out for mass housing ended up being trapped as bad debts.

He said: “We will try to recover all those bad loans in order to plough them back into mass housing, improve the profitability of the nation and liquidity of the FMBN in order to carry out its mandate.

“Well, we can’t say we will cut down the housing deficit to 10 million but to ensure that the mass housing is improved during our tenure and the housing deficit reduced to the barest minimum.

“Meeting the housing demand of 17 million houses needs about N60 trillion and for you to think that by magic we can get up to N60 trillion to achieve that is a huge task. But we will do our best to ensure that through investments, Public Private Partnership (PPP) arrangements and through other means of generating foreign investors, to see how we can improve on it.”

The FMBN managing Director explained that it addressing the housing deficit requires innovative solutions including PPP, increased budget financing of the housing sector, existence of viable mortgage system and the need for all stakeholders to think outside the box in proffering the needed financing solutions to the challenges facing the housing sector.

Meanwhile, the Association of Housing Corporations of Nigeria (AHCN), said as part of its efforts towards bridging the housing deficit Nigeria, it has created an off-takers data base throughout Nigeria in partnership with Value Chain Project Consultant Limited and had commenced process of structuring a N500 billion revolving housing intervention fund from the Central Bank of Nigeria to facilitate mass housing construction for Nigerians.

The AHCN President, Mohammed Adamu, made the disclosure while on courtesy call on the FMBN Managing Director at the banks corporate headquarters, Abuja.