By Mashe Umaru Gwamna
The Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Federal Housing Authority(FHA)Senator Gbenga Ashafa, said the agency is now ready to reposition the so as to deliver more affordable housing to all Nigerians.
“What we’ve witnessed in the last 72hours, has given FHA a different perspective of everything”.
Ashafa made this know to journalists in an interview at the second day of FHA @50 celebration in Abuja at the weekend.
He explained that, “To this extend, our staffs are well positioned, we as a management are ready to train and retrained them.
“We”ll not just make our activities a yearly affairs, we will be having seminars and conferences for our staff to know that the world is such a large place that is beyond Nigeria “.
He reiterated that, “We have gathered here for FHA@50 with professors, serving ministers, former ministers, legislators, stakeholders among other professionals who at one way or the other have impacted in us all the necessity to reach out more. We are confident that, they can collaborate with us to give FHA an enabling Act that will make it achieve its mandate”.
However, he emphasized that
“What we have been promised by the president Bola Tinubu is that the blue print on the strategic housing policy , will be such that an average Nigerian will be able to get a house under a loan agreement and over the years pays back. In case he /she couldn’t pay during that period , the extension will be for the family to continue the repayment.“
He said “We are collaborating state governments. Most of the state governments have seen the need to give us parcels of land not outside the metropolis.
“Where after building those estates it becomes very difficult to access them but no they should gives us parcel of land not far away from the metropolis, this is the kind of collaboration we are looking for all around ”.
He noted that what so ever estate we are building now, we have the mandate of the president.
“ We have done well in the rent to own model that we use in Zuba and we are now going to have a section that will take care of low income and physical challenge that’s rent to own”, He stated .
He stated that housing is an area that government must focus in , to be able to reduce unemployment, when we look at the value chain of building one unit of housing.
“ Within the value chain we have many professionals ,artisans and vendors among other “.
