From Johnson Nwankwo
The federal government plans to build 500 housing units in Kaduna State as part of an effort to address the challenge associated with the housing deficit in the country.
The managing director of the Federal Housing Authority, Oyetunde Ojo, stated this while receiving the Right of Occupancy for 157 hectares of land given to the agency by Kaduna State governor, Senator Uba Sani, in Kaduna on Tuesday.
He said the housing project being planned for the state would be delivered in phases and to start before the end of the year.
Quoting him, “With 157 hectares of land, we can assure the residents of Kaduna that, in phases, we will do more than 500 housing units in different categories. Though this land is in three locations on the land, we are going to create diaspora cities.
“Our first point of consideration on the building is for the people. We will make sure we build massively because this is the message of Mr President to make sure we deliver houses for Nigerians at an affordable rate.
“This is why we keep telling Nigerians to be patient a little bit because this is a journey. We were here in Kaduna two months ago and we have seen the result of the journey. His Excellency Governor Uba Sani specially to say a very big thank you by making sure the land is available.
“Another process is the building which we are about to start the ground breaking in Kaduna and in less than a month from now, you will start seeing the work of Mr President, I won’t say the work of FHA.
“We are planning massive housing projects across Nigeria. The Federal Housing Authority will be building, the Federal Ministry of Housing and Urban Development is building and even private developers are building. That is why the Federal Executive Council has recently passed the infrastructural fund in which FHA is going to be a major beneficiary.
“We are assuring Nigerians that in one year from now, they won’t be able to count the number of housing units that Emily’s have been delivered.”
Ojo said the housing would come in a 25 year mortgage which would be affordable to the formal and the informal sector.
The governor, while presenting the land documents to the FHA MD, said building affordable houses was one of the key focuses of his administration.
The governor added that his administration had in the last one year allocated over 1,000 hectares of land to developers both private and government agencies who were willing to build affordable houses for the people of the state.
Sani said, “Here in Kaduna, we have really made it clear that, in our time, we will try as much as possible to ensure that people who are underserved and poor have at least a roof on top of their heads.
“Because of our effort, we have also attracted people who are willing to go to Kaduna to build houses for us even for free. You may be aware that Qatar Charity foundation is doing one of the major, i think the biggest. Today they are building hundreds of houses for the underprivileged in Kaduna free.
“For me the reason they have decided to focus here is because they realised that the Kaduna State government is very serious about ensuring that we build affordable houses for people.”
