By Angela Atabo

The Nasarawa Government and the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria (FMBN) have agreed on a partnership to deliver affordable homes for civil servants in the state.

Dr Emmanuel Akabe, Deputy Governor of Nasarawa State, made this known when he led a delegation of the State Government on a visit to the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of FMBN, Shehu Osidi, on Tuesday in Abuja.

”When we got into office, we reeled out plans to industrialise the state and to ensure peace and security.

”The next plan is to take care of our civil servants by getting them affordable houses so they would be comfortable enough to deliver on their mandate.

“So in Nasarawa state ,we passed a law on all the government houses that occupiers of those houses are now going to own them

“We have started an owner-occupier policy and a lot of the civil servants living in those houses really do not have the money to pay for the houses at once,” he said.

Akabe said the government visited FMBN to explore ways the bank would assist civil servants to obtain houses under any of its loan products.

“Something like a mortgage facility for these civil servants to own their houses.

“It is part of the plea that I brought here, because we have about 141 of those houses available for the civil servants to own. So I am bringing the cry here to see if some facilities available for them.

“We are looking forward to more collaboration between Nasarawa state and FMBN because we believe that there are many avenues that are there for us to collaborate to uplift the living standards of our people,”

Responding, Osidi, expressed the willingness of the bank to provide mortgage services to the civil servants .

Osidi said,“ we are going to help them own houses through our regular national housing fund because they will be unable to raise the 10 per cent equity.

“We will consider this under our rent to own housing scheme so workers can own the properties.”

Osidi added that there were other federal government houses completed in the state not yet off taken.

“We will enter into a sort of arrangement where the state government can take those houses and allocate them to civil servants.

“That way instead of 141 people owning houses we will now have 241 people.”

According to Osidi, FMBN has been in partnership with Nasarawa state and has carried out some projects through the support of Governor Abdullahi Sule .

He said FMBN through the NHF scheme has disbursed housing loans to numerous beneficiaries.

He added that under the home renovation loan window, FMBN advanced N7.7b to 8,754 indigenes of Nasarawa state while 105 NHF beneficiaries recently became homeowners under FMBN’s Rent-to-Own scheme with mortgages in the sum of N666m.

Osidi said the bank is poised to provide mortgage finance for off-takers of completed housing units in the fast-developing Nasarawa Technology Village.

He added that the bank has also financed more than 11 housing projects in the state and delivered 632 housing units under the Cooperative Housing Development Loan in the sum of N6.6 billion among others.(NAN)(www.nannews.ng)

Edited by Sadiya Hamza