The Association of Housing Corporations of Nigeria (AHCN) has called for the creation of a Special Funding Vehicle for mass housing provision for Housing Corporation projects that will service civil servants in the country.
The Association’s President, Dr. Victor Onukwugha made the call during a courtesy call on the Managing Director of the Nigeria Mortgage Refinance Company (NMRC), Mr Kehinde Ogundimu in Abuja on Thursday.
Onukwugha said such funds when created would be used to develop worker’s estates which will be allocated through mortgages that would be deducted from workers’ salary from source.
He said the purpose of the courtesy call was to highlight some of the issues in the housing sector and to rub minds with the management of NMRC on possible ways of improving the housing situation in Nigeria.
The President lamented that the challenges of housing provision especially for low income earners in the recent past has been overwhelming despite all deliberate efforts to arrest increasing housing deficits.
Onukwugha said ‘’despite all concerted efforts by all stakeholders to reduce these daunting deficits, the housing needs of our people are still quite high much as diverse housing problems in the country kept rising with enormous challenges amidst government efforts to tackle these problems’’
He identified the crawling mortgage system as one of the critical problem areas of the housing sector, as it makes it difficult to access housing finance for construction, adding that the NMRC is best positioned to attract people to embrace mortgages as a recent report put the total mortgage said to be created and issued in Nigeria in 2017 to be less than 5000.
The President solicited the support of the NMRC in supply of adequate data that will strengthen the plan of the association to structure a N500b revolving housing intervention fund from the CBN to facilitate mass housing constructions in Nigeria.
He said the AHCN has put in place a specialized practical training for professionals and people that supervise and inspect projects on site to improve the quality of workmen and skilled technicians, calling on the NMRC to ensure its technical staff are part of the training as it will help in ensuring housing delivery in the country.
The Association of Housing Corporations of Nigeria was established in 1964 by the defunct three regional housing corporations and the Lagos Executive Development Board and it is the umbrella body with 50 member organizations consisting of federal and state property agencies, housing research institutes, mortgage establishments and some private property developers.
