Federal Housing Authority Mortgage Bank (FHAMB), a wholly owned subsidiary of the FHA has been named mortgage banker to the Federal Integrated Staff Housing (FISH) Programme.
President Muhammadu Buhari on August 1, 2016 performed the first estate under the programmed at Apo Tyafi District of the Federal Capital City.
Buhari was represented at the ceremony attended by Permanent Secretaries and the cream of the Federal civil service by the Minister of State for Power, Works and Housing, Alhaji Mustapha Baba Shehuri.
The Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Mrs. Winifred Ekanem Oyo-Ita expressed regret that a large proportion of civil servants that did not benefit from the immediate past sale of government houses lived in slums and unplanned settlements because of their inability to afford to own houses or rent decent accommodation in planned layouts.
She said the FISH initiative was conceptualized to provide cost effective and affordable housing for various categories of workers as a way of uplifting their quality of life during and after service. Mrs. Oyo-Ita said the delivery of affordable housing under the programme was predicated on multi-sectoral support and cooperation which included group land acquisition from the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) and the states, provision of infrastructure and financial support thro0ugh strategic partnership, cost effective pre-structural drawings and designs as well as special intervention funds from the Federal Government using the expertise and skills of civil servants to supervise, develop and implement housing delivery. She said the FISH programme, operating under the umbrella of the Federal Integrated Staff Housing Cooperative Society had forwarded applications for land to the FCTA and would be doing same to interested states nationwide.
By that arrangement, she noted, the high cost of land acquisition and the difficulty in processing title deeds that added to the excessive cost of houses per unit at completion would be assuaged.
Under the Memorandum of Understanding signed with the OHCSF, FHAMB will be the custodian of the FISH programme with funds accessed by beneficiaries of the scheme through the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria (FMBN) loan window.
FHAMB will disburse funds to contractors and developers as approved by the FISH Project Committee and the FHA. It will also assess civil servants for mortgage facilities for houses and package mortgages for those qualified in all the states as well as collect loan repayment from beneficiaries.
FHAMB will be the project financier through collaboration with the Nigerian Mortgage Refinance Company. FISH will be run by a 15 member committee headed by a Permanent Secretary in the OHCSF, Mr. S. K. Y. Adelakun. It has seven other permanent secretaries as members as well as FHA’s Managing Director, Professor Mohammed Al-Amin and the FHAMB acting Managing Director, Alhaji Hayyatudeen Atiku Awwal.
FISH is expected to leverage on Ministries, Department and Agencies (MDAs) to acquire group land allocations at reasonable cost to make the houses affordable.
It will use the Public Private Partnership (PPP) window to build houses and harness the existing potentials of such partnerships to provide massive and affordable housing for Federal civil servants before and after retirement.
FISH will also consolidate existing unutilized group land allocations to the cooperative societies of MDAs and related Federal civil servants associations into the Federal Integrated Staff Housing Cooperative Society Ltd for the purpose of effective coordination and utilization for optimal benefit of staff.
The programmed will provide land and infrastructure for proposed estates while the houses would be built in phases. Buyers are expected to provide 20 percent equity of the cost of their houses which shall be domiciled in FHAMB while the remaining 80 percent shall be financed through mortgage.
The monthly repayment by beneficiaries shall either be remitted to FHAMB through its correspondent banks monthly or have their salary accounts domiciled in FHAMB.