By Jude Njoku

Mr Bosun Jeje is the new Lagos State Commissioner for Housing. Coming from the private sector where he managed YKB Homes Limited, Mr Jeje said he will use his experience to provide affordable housing to Lagosians.

The Commissioner explained that apart from sourcing cheap and affordable local raw materials, the Ministry will also give single digit interest loans to prospective home buyers. The six percent interest loan would be given to home buyers under the State’s Home Ownership Mortgage Scheme, HOMES.

Mr. Bosun Jeje

Jeje who spoke at an interactive session with newsmen at the weekend also promised to use the funds generated from the sale of houses in highbrow areas to subsidise the construction of houses for the low-income group.

“We are going to build many affordable houses and in that process, we will look for a way to bring the cost of construction down. Once the cost is up, it cannot be affordable housing again, it will be out of the reach of the poor.

The first thing is how do we source for local raw materials which will bring costs down. We will look at the total package of bringing the cost of construction down. Having done that, the cost of the houses will come down drastically. With that, people can now afford the houses.

“Having done that, Lagos State Government has decided to float a Home Ownership Mortgage Scheme, HOMES. With that, we want to put in place, an effective mortgage system that will be comparable to the ones we have in developed societies.

All over the world, not many people can afford to dip their hands into their pockets and pay for houses in full, but when you have an effective and workable mortgage scheme in place, what you will demand from people is their equity contribution,” he said.

The Commissioner advised potential home owners to join Cooperative Societies where they can borrow the money to pay for the equity contribution. “When you put the equity down, the mortgage scheme will take over the balance and then you start paying back for a period of time which can be between 15 and 20 years. We have put this mortgage scheme in place and I think it will take off any moment from now.

So, with that, people can go to the primary mortgage institution, PMI, pay their equity contribution and signify the type of house they want and then start paying the balance. With that, I think, we have helped the low-income to buy their own houses.

I expect that the person that wants to buy the house to go a step further, maybe by way of joining Cooperative Societies where you have a pool of funds and when you see a house you want to get, you can go to the Cooperative Society.

They will help you with equity contribution and once you get that, you can come back to the mortgage institution who will now finance other aspects. By that system, everybody will now have a sense of participation.

The former YKB Homes boss declared: “If we could do it in the private sector, we can do it in the public sector. The only difference is that in the private sector, the motivation is profit-making.

In the public sector, you have social responsibility to the public. But in my own system, what I am coming with is to marry social welfare and private initiative. You have to marry the two together to achieve the goal. Like what we are doing now, we have a prime area (Ikoyi, Victoria Island, Ikeja GRA) that we are constructing.

When we do that, we sell to subsidise the area for low-income earners. Secondly, we intend to go into public private partnership, PPP with developers whereby the burden will not be on the Government alone.

When we give the private sector opportunity and the enabling environment to develop, they too will participate in the social contract that we have with te people,” he said.