Fashola Seeks Indigenous Research To Validate 17m Housing Deficit

The minister of power, works and housing, Babatunde Fashola, has stressed the need to launch indigenous research to validate the figures provided by World Bank on 17 million housing deficit.

The minister, who disclosed this in Abuja yesterday at the unveiling of Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria (FMBN) digital platform code for National Housing Fund (NHF) contributors,  disclosed that the federal government was working assiduously to recapitalise the bank for enhanced service delivery to Nigerians.

Represented by the director of planning, research andstatistics in the ministry, Mr Famous Esedowa, he described the digitisation of FMBN operations as part of federal government’s plans on improving ease of doing business.

The minister stated that the digitisation was timely, adding that organisations and Nigerians must rely on indigenous research in some of its activities as the digital platform has a lot to do with primary research.

In his address, the managing director of FMBN,Ahmed Dangiwa, stated that having resumed office on May 2017 , he discovered that several employees did not remit their deductions to the scheme and that most contributors did not know the status of their contributions and among others.

Dangiwa pointed out that the bank decided to automate the process and give NHF contributors unfettered access to information about their contributions and policies associated with the scheme for greater transparency, accountability and service delivery.

To address the problems, he noted that the bank considered mobile penetration in Nigeria as the preferred medium of reaching out to the contributors, by adopting ecosystem of innovative technologies that would bring services of the bank to their doorstep.