FG woos cooperative societies to provide mass housing, employments

The Federal Government (FG) on Thursday, said it has resolved to use cooperative societies as a tool to achieving affordable mass housing for Nigerians.

It said the increase in construction in states across the country will also bring about employment opportunities.

The Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola stated this in Abuja, at the ongoing 8th Meeting of the National Council on Lands, Housing and Urban Development with the theme,” Housing Development and Consumer Credit as Strategies for National Prosperity.”

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He explained that cooperatives are successful in transportation, agriculture, trades and markets and among artisans stressing that they can also deliver on large scale affordable housing.

“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 the federal government gives them, through the Federal Mortgage Bank, loans to construct and loans to members to buy.

“This is why we have resolved to use cooperatives as the vehicle to achieve more construction in many states in order to expand the scale of construction, and therefore maximise the scale of opportunities,” he said.

Fashola stated that the cooperative Housing Development Loan (CDL) allows cooperative societies that have acquired land to approach the FMBN for loans to build affordable housing for their members

Other policies and programmes he stated  are the issuance of the backlog of certificates of occupancy and consent to land transactions ( 3,000) and (1,708) respectively.

According to him, the issuance will strengthen and support access to credit and also contribute to improving value of land by 30-40 per cent.