How we’ll use cooperatives to deliver more houses in states - Fashola

The federal government has resolved to use cooperatives as the vehicle to achieve more construction in many states, Minister of Works and Housing Mr. Babatunde Raji Fashola has said.

The minister stated this on Thursday in Abuja during the meeting of the National Council on Lands, Housing and Urban Development with the theme “Housing Development and Consumer Credit as Strategies for National Prosperity.”

He said the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria (FMBN), which is the parastatal for providing construction and acquisition finance has been designated as the focal agency to drive this initiative.

“What we see is that cooperatives have been successful in transportation, agriculture, trades and markets and among artisans. We think it can be successful in delivering large scale affordable housing if cooperatives acquire their own land, design what they want to build, get state urban planning approval, and federal government gives them, through the FMBN, loans to construct and loans to members to buy,” Fashola said.

Speaking further, he said, “This is our broad vision for enabling access to housing and consumer credit (loans) through construction.”

Other policies and programmes to drive more housing developments, according to him, are the issuance of backlog of certificates of occupancy and consent to land transactions (3,000) and (1,708) respectively.

The National Council is a platform for representatives of the federal government, the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory to consider policy and form consensus about how beneficial policies, programmes and projects can be implemented by the federal and all the state governments including the FCT.