By Adedapo Adesanya
In a bid to address the housing deficit in Nigeria, the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria (FMBN) has said it was targeting affordable home ownership for the Low and Medium Income (LMI) market segment.
Managing Director of FMBN, Mr Ahmed Dangiwa, said this during the ongoing National House Fair 3.0 in Abuja themed New Economy: Amplifying the Impacts and Possibilities of Real Estate Utilising Technology.
“The future growth and development of the Nigerian housing sector, especially the mortgage sub-sector, is predicated on expanding housing access and availability for the middle class,” Mr Dangiwa said.
He noted that the LMI segment accounted for about 90 percent of the Nigerian population and that with government assisted funds, it would be possible to improve affordability for the middle-income market.
He revealed that the National Housing Fund had on board 4,927,407 contributors and 23,387 organisations registered through the bank and has disbursed N226.6 billion as loan through the National Housing Fund (NHF).
“Construction of 27,584 housing units financed to date, 20,591 NHF mortgage loans granted to NHF contributors while 27,247 housing micro-loans of N28.9 billion disbursed and more than N31.1 billion was refunded to 273,485 retirees,’’ Mr Dangiwa said.
Mr Dangiwa further said that the adoption of a multi-dimensional approach to housing finance in Nigeria must be encouraged and also called on the need to strengthen government institutions in order to deliver assist-funding and collaboration among relevant stakeholders.
On her part, the Convener of the fair and Managing Director, Bstan Mortgage and Cooperation, Mrs Becky Damilola-Oke, said that inadequate housing could affect the security, physical health and privacy of man.
Mrs Damilola-Oke said that housing policy was a tool that was used in town planning for solving housing problems and consequently for the achievement of sustainable housing.
She said that town planning focuses on spatial arrangement of urban and rural land use for the purpose of creating orderly, economical and functional efficient.
Mrs Damilola-Oke said that policy instrument was one of the ways of tracking housing problems and said that the new economy could be used to embrace housing-technology innovations.
Modupe Gbadeyanka