The Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola has launched the National Cooperative Housing Development Scheme in Abuja.
Fashola launched the Scheme while commissioning Woodhill Estate, a project under the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria Cooperative Housing Development Loan in Kuje, Abuja, on Monday.
While underscoring the importance of cooperatives, Fashola said ‘’Cooperatives have become a very critical tool to addressing the housing deficit problem. Cooperatives have worked in many other sectors of our economy including agriculture, transportation and the business sector. We believe cooperative is something that we must now fully engage in the housing sector.’’
He said his Ministry will in the next few weeks flag off the Scheme at zonal levels across the 6 geo political zones of the country.
According to him ‘’ we want people to acquire land, design what they want to build, organize themselves into registered cooperatives, go to their state governments where they are, get title for that land, get a plan permit, go to the FMBN offices in any of the 36 states of the federation and apply for a loan, I assure you, you will get a positive response’’
The Minister noted that the government will be using the energy of the cooperative societies to build what they want, what they can afford and what they can sustain, adding that the houses will be according to the taste of the members of such cooperative societies.
He said the Federal Government expects to see a rapid scale up of housing construction in Nigeria which will not only lead to home ownership, but will also become a tool for driving economic growth and providing jobs in line with the plans of the present administration to lift 100 million Nigerians out of poverty in the next 10 years.
On the housing deficit controversy, Fashola said ‘’ when I first heard that there was 17 million housing deficit, it was credited to an international organization, and every time I have asked them, they have denied ever saying so. But while we were struggling with the number of the deficit, the number has suddenly jumped and so who is behind this?’’
He noted that ‘’there is housing deficit without a doubt, but it seems the problem is more pronounced in the urban centres than in the rural areas. And even in the urban centres, where is deficit, there are empty houses. Across the FCT, Lagos, Port Harcourt, Onitsha, Asaba, there are empty houses. That suggests to you that if we are counting the number of housing deficit, have we counted the number of empty houses? I disagree with the deficit figures, those who alleged the figures should provide evidence. About three weeks ago, the FCT announced that they were going to embark on audit of all empty houses. Those empty houses speak eloquently to the problem that the FMBN, the cooperatives, the developers have solved here.’’
According to him, the large number of empty houses in the urban centres speak to the question of affordability. He said ‘’do we consult the home owners before we build for them, do we know what they want? In many instances, what you find is that the empty houses are either too big or too small, or a combination of both or either too expensive to meet the limit of the off taker. Today, we are here because of our strategic partnership with cooperatives, the FMBN, the Buhari government is addressing the question of affordability frontally’’
Woodhill Estate was conceived as part of the collaborative efforts between the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria, aka Care Multipurpose Cooperative Society and Perfect Estate Developers. The project commenced with the first phase in October 2018 and the second phase was approved in July 2019. The total number of houses under the Phase 1 and 2 is 154 units comprising of 80 units of 2 bedrooms semi-detached bungalows and 74 units of 3 bedroom detached bungalows. The Phase 1 that was commissioned on Monday has 40 units of 2-bedroom semi-detached bungalow and 37 units of 3 bedrooms detached bungalow.
