Minister of Housing and Urban Development, Ahmed Dangiwa, has charged the Federal Housing Authority (FHA) to aggressively upscale its delivery capacity to provide housing to all segments of the Nigerian population by raising funds from the capital market and issuing bonds.
Dangiwa who spoke at the 50th Anniversary celebration of the FHA in Abuja, Thursday, said the current capacity of delivering 1,000 per annum in the past 50 years was unacceptable.
He said the golden jubilee was a moment for sober reflection for the management and staff of the agency, and all housing stakeholders.
The minister congratulated the FHA for marking 50 years but charged the management to be visionary and innovative, adding that the Authority has advantage of operating across all income segments and must take advantage of its unique position to deliver more value to government and Nigerians.
“I want to see the FHA go to the capital market, issue bonds, and raise funding to deliver mass housing projects across the country, market them, payback the loans, and declare profit. In the next fifty years, we expect that FHA would be celebrating millions of homes built and successfully delivered to Nigerians,” he said.
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He decried that the FHA’s performance in the last 50 years was not commendable and so must wake up and respond creatively to the housing crisis in the country.
He added, “Records show that FHA has only delivered a cumulative of just over 50,000 housing units. That shows an average of 1,000 houses per year in 50 years. This is clearly not acceptable, especially from Nigeria’s foremost housing agency that has so many institutional advantages that it can leverage to deliver more results.
“Last month, during the Shelter Afrique EGM in Algeria, I discovered from my engagements with the Algerian Government that an Agency like the FHA delivers between 400,000 and 1m houses annually. In fact, in a particular year, that Agency delivered 1,060,000 houses. This underscores the need for FHA to aggressively upscale its delivery capacity.”
In his opening remarks, Managing Director of the FHA, Senator Gbenga Ashafa, stressed that the Authority is already implementing operational reforms in the areas of digitization and process optimisation, noting that they must build on the successes on the past to deliver more houses to Nigerians that are decent and affordable.
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