Okonjo-Iweala’s ‘affordable’ housing policy
Before it is too late, it is expedient to highlight the lapses in the execution of the Malaysian experience in order to correct the anomalies and avoid the pitfalls in our journey to achieving mass housing for our masses and learn the lessons that will enhance our ability to move away from the failures of […]
Before it is too late, it is expedient to highlight the lapses in the execution of the Malaysian experience in order to correct the anomalies and avoid the pitfalls in our journey to achieving mass housing for our masses and learn the lessons that will enhance our ability to move away from the failures of the past.
For example, the Malaysian government at first instance targeted the construction of 350, 000 units for low income earners with a monthly income of N78, 872.55, and a fixed price for the building at N2, 039, 100.00. Taking the case of the Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur with about 52% of the population into trading and small businesses, it was discovered that achievement of the low income housing in Kuala Lumpur was the lowest with 27.3% compared to the medium (233.7%) and the high cost (749.6%).
In their attempt to resolve these imbalances, the Malaysian government created a new categorization called the low medium cost housing in 1998 which recorded a tremendous success taken the above negating factors into consideration.
It is equally argued that one of the fundamental causes of the low performance of Malaysian government low income housing was as a result of the challenge of access to financial services at the rural areas. However, I am pleased to inform the minister that the Nigeria financial inclusive structure which has the Association of Non-Bank Microfinance Institutions of Nigeria, (ANMFIN) is capable of addressing the most part of the challenges faced by the Malaysian government particularly in the area of regulation, control and monitoring of the low income housing deliverables.
This means that for NMRC objectives to be achieved, efforts must be made dispassionately to streamline their activities into the financial inclusion strategy of the Federal Government. Otherwise how else do they hope to address the huge financial gap with previous stats indicating that adult financial exclusion in Nigeria is estimated at 46.3%?
Operating across Nigeria, providing key financial link to the masses, ANMFIN in December 2013 alone, registered over 2, 500 institutions and guided them into opening account with commercial banks as well as building their capacity to begin the process of providing loans, savings, and other ancillary services.
Further analysis of the impact of the Non-Bank Microfinance Institutions shows that clients in the microfinance sector rose from 273, 094 in 2005 to about 1.7million in 2012 with female clients dominating transactions by a total of 46.2% growth between 2011 and 2012. More so, the number of depositors has continued to be on the rise from 200, 000 in 2005 to about 1.2million increasing the values of depositors from N47 billion in 2005 to N86 billion by the end of 2011.
It is therefore troubling to hear the Minister say that “an important component to the launch of the NMRC is the development of mass housing scheme by private developers working with the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria … some of the mass housing will be done on a rent to own model…”
Ossai Ilome, ANMFIN, Abuja