The Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria (FMBN) has revealed that since the inception of the National Housing Fund (NHF) scheme, the board has disbursed up to N226 billion as loans to help address the country’s housing deficit.
This was made known by the Managing Director of FMBN, Mr Ahmed Dangiwa in abuja on Wednesday
‘’The fund has given construction loans to developers to construct 27, 584 units. Out of this, 20, 591 have been granted to NHF contributors, while 27,247 housing micro-loans of N28.9 billion already disbursed.
“More than N31.1 billion was refunded to 273,485 retirees,’’ Dangiwa said.
According to him the bank has registered 4,927,407 contributors and 23,387 organisations on NHF.
He said that the bank was targeting affordable home ownership for Low and Medium Income (LMI) market segment.
The LMI segment, he said, accounts for about 90 per cent of the Nigerian population.
Dangiwa said that mortgage finance accessibility and affordability formed a major focus of the bank.
He said that “government-assist fund’’ was critical for improving affordability for the middle income market.
“The future growth and development of the Nigerian housing sector, especially the mortgage sub-sector, is predicated on expanding housing access and affability for the middle class,’’ Dangiwa said.
He said that as demonstrated in economies like the U.S., Singapore and others, empowering the middle class through home ownership was the surest avenue for economic development drive by production and construction consumption.
According to him, empowering the middle class creates a wealthy society.
Dangiwa said that the adoption of a multi-dimensional approach to housing finance in Nigeria must be encouraged.
