FHA introduces 3 new housing products in Nigeria

The Federal Housing Authority (FHA), as part of its statutory functions, has come up with three major initiatives to ensure rapid increase of housing delivery in the country.

As an agency established to provide housing interventions across states in Nigeria, FHA has made new acquisitions to bring new settlements, estates across six geo-political zones in the country.

Besides, rather than concentrating on building houses, the authority has also come up with new products, one of which is serviced products.

Speaking on the initiatives in Lagos recently, FHA Managing Director,  Professor Mohammed Al-Amin, disclosed that serviced product is a situation where the needed facilities and infrastructure such as road networks, water and power, including social amenities like  primary schools would be provided and plots of lands would be sold to the would-be home owners.

“There is also a new product of choice prototype, where we do open all the lands, provide all the infrastructure and give you four alternatives from which you choose the one you want to build. In this case, prospective buyers have the choice to build their houses within 20 months or any of our stipulated months.

“Another product is to build just a carcass, where buyers would be allowed to do their finishing. Reason is to allow the individuals to meet their tastes and quality they desire. In this case, we don’t have to do everything for everybody”, said Al-amin.

But aside from the above, the organisation has also brought some other product on board known as “expanded housing product”. This product provides opportunity for a buyer to get a land and start from building a one-bedroom apartment that  can be expanded it to three or four bedroom. The designs are there already which architect has done  in such a way that one can just do some extensions and it becomes three bedroom.

“It is another product in which we have brought on board. And all these are to be done across the country. Presently, because of the population increase in a place like Abuja where there is the demand for low income housing,  we have opened up three places this year. These are Kwali, Bwari and Zuba.

“All these have been fully approved by the FCDA. So, this is what we intend to do in other places to provide houses that are affordable in terms of money, and within the good architectural standard”, he assured.

Professor Al-amin also disclosed that his agency has also made  acquisitions designed to bring new settlements or estates across Nigeria. According to him, having realised  that Federal Government staff as well as state government staff are under the National Housing Fund, where one can access between N5million to 15million, but which over the 30 years of this fund, only three per cent of Nigerian workers have benefited, we identified that the problem for non-accessibility of the fund is its cumbersome process.

“So we designed a programme in which we get into collaboration with the cooperative union of MDA’s , be it a ministry, department or an agency. We struck an understanding with them, get them lands, build them houses within that bracket of N5million to N15mllion and also pursue the money for them from the federal mortgage time.

“So instead of an individual going there, battling from one office to another, it’s easier for government workers to have their house allocated to them. All they need to do is to  fill our form, get money for them and get their houses. This is another product that we are also working on.

“Lastly, there is also the need for housing intervention in the northern part of the country that has been ravaged by Boko Haram activities, where thousands of houses were burnt down, forcing people go to temporal camps as IDPs.

“Now, we have designed a product called special housing project, using a technology called, rammed art technology.

“The rammed art technology was a technology that has African background and knowledge in which you use bricks to build your houses, but Americans improved that and went and use rammed-earth, instead of doing the bricks, you just make a form of timber from the foundation up to roofing level,” he disclosed.