The chairman of Chiocestone Capital Limited, Qudus Kola Balogun has made a case for the former managing director of the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria (FMBN) Ahmed Dangiwa to be made the minister of housing.
He said Dangiwa, as the boss of FMBN, realised that many of the houses that banks had built were not subscribed because people could not access them due to their equities being too high.
Consequently, he created another programme called “Rent-to-Own” which enabled subscribers to approach FMBN offices in the states to access loans and own their houses.
In a statement he issued yesterday on the ministerial nominee, Kola Balogun said Dangiwa also brought an insurance scheme to the mortgage housing sector – in the event that the house is destroyed by a storm, rain or other causes, insurance will be there to cover the loss, death and paying up the house on behalf of the deceased’s family.
According to him, Dangiwa also introduced the use of certificates of occupancy (C of O) for lands, adding that, “instead of buying houses, subscribers got loans to build the houses at their own pace on any location.”
He said under this arrangement, money is given to subscribers in three phases – 30 percent to start it; 30 percent to roof and the remaining 40 percent for finishing.
Other milestones recorded by the FMBN management under Dangiwa, he said were zero equity contribution for mortgage loans that were N5 million and below, reduction of equity for loans of up to N15 million from 30 percent to 10 percent as well as increased tempo in the provision of housing loans to Nigerian workers under the National Housing Fund (NHF).
He said, “Under Dangiwa, FMBN’s increased nationwide public sensitisation programme, high-level engagements with stakeholders including state governments, labour unions and other housing industry persons and increased transparency saw the increase of workers who contribute 2.5 percent of the monthly salaries to NHF scheme rise above five million. Thus, expanding the pool of finance available to the FMBN.
“Notably, the bank pooled a total of N134 billion from the NHF within three years, with N121 billion in loan approvals. This implied an average of N44 billion in total contributions per year! The difference is stark when compared to total collections of N232 billion between 1992 and 2016 at a yearly average of N9.6 billon.
“The astonishing improvements recorded by the Dangiwa-led team within three years are significant in the history of housing development in Nigeria at two fundamental levels.
The strides signalled what is possible and should encourage the government and relevant industry stakeholders to support and encourage
“From a very unique perspective, therefore, Dangiwa understood why developers build expensive houses. He links this to limited funds available to them. First, they got the lands at very high costs – as high as 25 to 30 percent. In banks they give construction finance at 25-30 percent interest rate, but here we give construction finance to developers at 10 percent, so we have reduced in such a way that constructions done by developers for FMBN subscribers are meant to be more affordable.”
“Dangiwa spearheaded a N500 billion recapitalization drive of the bank to boost its capacity to create affordable mortgages which has received federal government and stakeholder wide support.
“FMBN sent a memo to FEC for the required N500 billion. However, Dangiwa explained that the bank was not expecting this to be made available in a fell swoop. Realistically, it was looking for N200 billion as equity contribution from the government, while N300 billion was to be sourced from investors who wanted to invest in FMBN,” he said.
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