Nigeria Contributed $22m to Shelter Afrique  

• Nigeria has 15.80 % shareholding in the company  

The Federal Government has announced that Nigeria has contributed a total of $22,503,144.84 million as a member of Shelter Afrique, with some of the major contributions including $9,392,135.66 in 2017 and $7,151,830.91 in 2020.

The Minister of Works and Housing, Mr Babatunde Fashola who represented the Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo in his remarks at the 42nd Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the company, stated that between 2016 AGM which was the 35th and this year’s AGM which is the 42nd, Nigeria’s shareholding in the company is 15.80 per cent which is valued at $30,724,961.00.

Fashola said “For a company that was struggling for funding in 2016, this was a much-needed injection of life-restoring capital and I must say that other member states have responded in kind.

“Beyond financial capital, Nigeria has also contributed the most important capital – The human capital—by offering Mr. Femi Adewole, to provide interim leadership for the company at perhaps its most turbulent period.

“With this background as we convene today I can say with a measure of confidence that for Shelter Afrique, the dark clouds are gone, and a bright new future of renewed hope lies ahead, especially with the leadership provided by our company’s board and management led respectively by Dr Chii Akporji and Mr Thierno-Habib Hann.

“On the domestic front, I am also pleased to report an increasing private sector participation in the delivery of an assortment of housing types for low- and high-income demand.”

He highlighted that with their control over land, within our federal constitutional arrangement, state governments are playing their roles in the supply of housing from Abia to Zamfara.

According to him, “These contributions to increasing housing supply are complemented by the Federal Government with initiatives such as the National Housing Programme that has delivered houses across 35 states and the Federal Capital Territory Abuja, complemented by the Federal Housing Estates across our six geo-political zones, and the Federal Mortgage Bank, ministerial housing scheme and co-operative housing initiatives across the 36 states of our country.”

He recalled some policy and process reforms that have been initiated or implemented since 2016, adding that “one of them is the removal of the condition for a 10% equity contribution by a mortgage applicant from the Federal Mortgage Bank for a Mortgage of N5 Million and below; and the reduction of the 15% equity contribution to 10% for mortgage applicants over N5 Million.

“This has helped to remove and reduce some of the barriers for access to funding for housing purposes. Because access to land is also critical to complement funding, between the period 2016 and today, we have undertaken and completed a full digitization of the Federal Lands Registry,” he added.

This process, he said, involved the scanning of almost 50,000 (fifty thousand) files comprising 2,476,400 (two million four hundred and seventy six thousand, four hundred) pages of documents and we are now ready to go live.

“This means that processes that used to take weeks and months can now be undertaken in about 24 hours. All of these have been complemented by the issuance of 6,685 (six thousand six hundred and eighty five) Certificates of Occupancy which are title documents to land in Nigeria, and the approval of 3,043 (three thousand and forty three) Consents, as at March 2023, which are statutory requirements for subsequent transactions such as sale or mortgage of land,” he said.

On her part, the chairperson of the board of the company, Dr Patience Chii Akporji said that the global economy’s growth rate was projected to slow down to 3.2 per cent from 2021’s 6 per cent, the weakest growth profile since 2001, aside from the 2020 global financial crisis.

Akporji said the global inflation forecast rose to 8.8 per cent from 4.7 per cent the previous year, adding “Indeed, the cost of living crisis, the tightening of financial conditions and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, among other events, weighed heavily on the outlook.

“African economies were also impacted by these developments. The African Economic Outlook report estimated the average growth of Africa’s Gross Domestic Products (GDP) to have slowed to 3.4 per cent from 4.8 per cent in 2021.”

President, Alhaji Muhammadu Buhari who was represented by the Minister of Finance Budget and National Planning, Mrs Zainab Ahmed, while declaring the four-day event open, said that the investment in Shelter Afrique is one of the best performing investments Nigeria has made and the position Shelter Afrique took to refloat the N46 billion bond in the Nigerian capital market is a very important catalytic investment especially for the development of Nigerian capital market.

“The federal administration of which I am privileged to lead is on the verge of winding down. So, this meeting is auspicious for rendering stewardship and showcasing some aspects of the achievements of the administration within the ambience of National Economic Growth and Development and Nigeria in size and scope,” the president said.