Abuja, – The Real Estate Developers Association of Nigeria (REDAN) has called for the restructuring the government agencies in the housing sector to enable them to fulfil their mandate of providing affordable house for the masses.
Rev, Ugochukwu Chime, President of REDAN, who spoke with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Wednesday, observed that the Federal Housing Authority had deviated from its mandate and was now building houses for the rich.
Chime also observed that the Federal Mortgage Bank was performing below expectation and called for its recapitalisation to boost its business and enable it to deliver on its mandate.
He further urged the government to address all issues hindering the efficiency of these agencies.
“You cannot fly with one wing; at a critical time like this, we need high injection of millions of houses to meet the housing deficit, so there’s an urgent need for funding.
“Its not good for you to have a bank with insufficient funding and then say they are not performing their best, FMBN is the only agency that provides construction and mortgage financing.
“We have witnessed situations where the government had doled out N200 billion to those in the entertainment industry and hundreds of billions to those who are in agriculture.
“ The housing sector deserves better since it is a basic need of man; therefore the minimum that could be invested in FMBN should be about N250 billion to recapitalise and restructure it.
“If we can embark on repositioning banks through the banking reform and put in place measures to ensure that banks do not have challenges as they used to have, why can’t we do the same to the FMBN?
“By not doing that, we are punishing the poor masses; what is necessary now is to do a forensic examination and find a way to restructure and fund it.”
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Chime said that it was time for the government to look inwards and evolve policies that would help in delivering mass housing to Nigerians.
According to him, the FHA and the FMBN, key agencies in housing that should move the sector forward are handicapped.
He called on the government to, as a matter of urgency, restructure the agencies to enable them to work effectively towards erasing the 17 million housing deficit. (NAN)