Middle and low income earners from the formal and informal sectors of the economy have expressed joy at the completion of the once abandoned Igbogbo/Bayeku housing scheme.
Located in Igbogbo-Bayeku Local Council Development Area of Lagos, the project which was embarked upon by the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria in conjunction with the Federal Ministry of Power, Works and Housing, was awarded in 2014 but was stalled due to demand for an upward review of the project sum by the contractors.
It was cause for sighs of relief when Architect Ahmed Dangiwa, the managing director of FMBN came with board members for a site inspection of the completed project.
Dangiwa said: “The total units of the building are 112 and that’s 48 one-bedroom apartments and 64 two bedroom apartments. The total money allocated for the building is N667 million.”
Speaking on the quality of the project, Dangiwa said, “This is not an inferior project, the windows are aluminum sliding windows. The exterior part of it is what we are now looking at, the only thing left for us is to secure the buildings and landscape and fence it so that the occupants will feel secure.”
He noted further that the National Housing Fund has gone a long way by creating up to N80 billion mortgages since inception, and created more than 20,000 housing stock in the country.
Dangiwa said: “This is one of it. In order to create these houses for low and medium people, by the time you leave the off takers to the developers, they will not afford it.”
FMBN, he said, is currently collaborating with labour unions, to ensure that they produced better designs, better quality and efficient houses that will make it cost effective.
“We give our mortgages at 6% and that’s the cheapest you can get anywhere. Other mortgages you find 18% and over 25% the country,” Dangiwa added.
Going forward, Dangiwa said the public should expect more housing delivery, depending on the soon to be approved capitalization.
The MD hinted of the mortgage bank’s plans to inject N500 billion into Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria (FMBN) over the next five years, in a bid to improve access to mortgage loans and home ownership for Nigerians
There are only an estimated 50,000 registered mortgages, of which FMBN accounts for 18,200.
“The company’s current capital base is grossly inadequate and that is why we are in the process of ensuring that the capital base be increased.
“Armed with the extra cash, FMBN can go from the 2,500 new mortgages it plans to sign up this year to 100,000 over the next two years. The extra capital will also encourage other investors to provide additional funding,” Dangiwa also said.
