By Chris Ochayi
A total sum of N77,209,649,799.89 has been collected by the National Housing Fund, NHF, from contributors since the establishment of the scheme in1992.

Minister of Lands Housing and Urban Development, Ms. Amal Pepple who disclosed this at the Ministry’s 2011 press briefing in Abuja, gave breakdown of the NHF collections in the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria administrative zone and states.

She explained further that, “the cumulative sum of N1,262,558,359.21 has been to a total of 67,263 qualified contributors. Of this amount, N310285,605.32 was refunded to 16,451 between January and October 2011. According to her “a total of 3,647,275 contributors have been registered with the scheme with 75,607 enlisted between January and October 2011.

The minister stated further that the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria, FMBN, accumulative approved loan portfolio stood at N151,094,021,500.05 as at October 30, 2011. The cumulative amount comprised N90,707,415,589.25, being Estate Development Loans, EDLs, for the construction of 32,831 housing units nationwide and N60,386,605,910.80 being NHF Mortgage loans to a total of 18,431 NHF contributors.

Mortgage loans

She said: “between January and October 2011,a total of N9,621,095,257.01 was approved as NHF mortgage loans to contributors while the sum of N26,055,490,851.57 was approved as Estate Department Loans.”

Ms. Pepple noted that “to improve service delivery of the NHF scheme, FMBN has developed the NHF E-collection platform in collaboration with a consult. The NHF E-collection platform is an IT-driven collection process which aims at capturing all contributions by leveraging on the IT infrastructure of all commercial banks in the country and seamlessly remitting the deductions to the FMBN.

“The deployment of the E-collection platform will commence shortly with a pilot scheme covering MDAs in the FCT,” she said, adding that this initiative is aimed at overcoming the deficiencies of the manual collection of NHF contributions.

To fast tract the social housing initiative, the minister said that arrangements have been concluded for the commencement of Site and Services scheme. To this end, she said the Ministry has established 150 fully serviced residential plots per site in 13 States of the six geo-political zones of the federation and the FCT.

The contractors are soon to be mobilised to the selected sites for the commencement of the construction of roads, drainages and culverts to service the Federal lands earmarked for the site and service under the project.

Some of the pilot areas are Kuje in FCT, Igbogbo, Osborne II in Lagos State, Gubio Road, Yola in Adamawa State, Bichi In Kano State, Bida In Niger State Republic Layout in Enugu State, and Rumuodaya, Boriki in Rivers State.