FMBN, Shelter Afrique Deepen Partnership On Housing Finance

The Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria( FMBN) and Shelter Afrique, an international development bank that focuses on financing affordable housing in Africa has intensified collaboration to provide construction and mortgage financing to developers in Nigeria.

The Managing Director of the FMBN, Mr. Shehu Osidi while addressing the media after a courtesy call by the Board of Shelter Afrique at the FMBN headquarters, yesterday in Abuja said Nigeria is second largest share holder in shelter Afrique, only next to Kenya but has unfortunately not benefited enough from the organization.

Osidi said the FMBN is revisiting an abandoned memoranda of understanding it signed with the organization in the bid to explore the advantages Nigerians stands to gain from the partnership.

The Managing Director who lamented on the funds tied down to many abandoned projects all over the country that was financed by his bank, also said the bank taking advantage of its partnership with the shelter Afrique to facilitate the completion and delivery of those projects to off-takers within the shortest possible time.“The FMBN has financed projects all over the country and some of these estate and projects have been abandoned with huge capital tied down in them. Our analysis of those projects indicates that there are occasions where the Bank went into partnership with state governments with the state governments promising to deliver infrastructure so that the bank can finance the construction of the houses, but  in many of those estates, the bank went ahead to construct those houses but the states governments at the time negates to provide the agreed infrastructure. So one of the founding options that is available in shelter Africa.”

“Shelter Africa actually provides Infrastructural financing. We need to explore the possibility of that to revamp those estates so that the infrastructure are created and then we complete those estates, provide off takers immediately and put them to use, by that we can free up the funds that have been tight down”, he said.

While responding the journalist, the Managing Director of Shelter Afrique, Thiermo-Habib Hann said the international development bank has just reversed its commitment status on Nigeria. He promised to revisit and go beyond the MoU and  other discussions made with the FMBN before his appointment as Managing Director of the bank.

“We are ready to collaborate with FMBN and other institutions across Nigeria to really address the housing gap. The challenges are there and  the opportunities are also there. As a development finance institution shelter afrique  developmemt bank is very well positioned to really collaborate with the government of Nigeria and in this trip we met all the leadership including the vice president of the Federal  Republic of Nigeria who is fully committed to really drive the growth of the sector and invest more in the sector knowing that housing creates jobs. It addresses security matters in different parts of the country and this is how we are looking on to really intervene and  resolve this crisis by investing massively into the housing sector”, she stated