Minister of Lands, Housing and Urban Development, Ms. Ammal Pepple, has challenged the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria (FMBN) to explore ways of providing houses for the generality of Nigerians as a social scheme.

Pepple who paid a working visit to FMBN in Abuja yesterday, said many people do not think that social housing scheme (that providing mass houses at cheaper prices) is feasible; but she believes that is workable. She urged the FMBN management to work towards providing quality houses at affordable prices for Nigeria’s teeming population.

The minister said this is imperative in order to address the reported 16 million housing deficit the country is currently grappling with. She was optimistic that the deficit is reducing. Pepple lauded the efforts of the FMBN management to increase participation in the National Housing Fund by bringing more states to contribute to the scheme. She implored the FMBN management to continue with the efforts in order to enable more Nigerians benefit from the housing scheme. Currently, about 12 states are not contributing to the National Housing Fund, a Federal Government’s housing scheme administered by the FMBN, which provides housing loans at 6 per cent to eligible contributors to the scheme.

Pepple disclosed that the ministry has created a site in Kuje, Abuja for prototype houses in the Federal Capital Territory. She said that the ministry uses the site for experimentation whereby a real estate developer that says it can build a 3-bedroom house in 5 days for instance, would be allowed to build the house at the site. The minister said the ministry would inspect the house on completion to ascertain the quality and the cost, in order to improve the quality of residential houses for Nigerians.

Mr. Mike Nwogbo, executive director, Organization Resourcing Department, FMBN, who represented the FMBN managing director, Mr. Gimba Ya’u Kumo, on the occasion, said the bank has been working towards improving the housing stock in Nigeria. He said the Bank is sourcing mortgage funds through the NHF as well as through the capital market. Nwogbo said the Bank has, through the NHF, collected N73.6 billion from contributors as at July, 2011, while N72.4 billion has been disbursed for housing finance also as at July 2011. There is a total approval of N140.3 billion housing loans since inception. The relatively low disbursement level is largely due to the inadequacy of available funds to meet the teeming housing needs of Nigerians. He said the Bank has been able to finance the building of not less than 57,794 housing units with the disbursed funds during the period.

The houses include 9,535 non-essential Federal Government residential houses which the FMBN refinanced in 2007 through a N26 billion mortgage-backed bonds floated in the capital market to enable federal civil servants to buy the houses in Abuja, during the implementation of the Federal Government’s monetisation policy.