For the Federal Government not to pay lip service to its promise of reducing housing deficit, coming on the heels of the recent approval of a National Housing Policy, the Real Estate Association of Nigeria (REDAN) has urged the Jonathan administration to fulfill its promise of recapitalising the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria (FMBN) to the tune of N200 billion.

Speaking with Property and Environ-ment in Abuja, last week, REDAN President, Chief Olabode Afolayan, said FMBN, as the “only organisation that we can rely on as an institution that is assisting us in providing cheap fund to construct affordable housing,” was being challenged by inade-quacy of funding by the Federal Government (FG).

He revealed that since about 15 months ago that the FG, through Vice President Namadi Sambo, promised a N200 billion lifeline to the FMBN, nothing had been heard, while further stating that “with this kind of attitude, it will be very difficult for us to develop as a nation, but we believe that if things are properly put in place, it will go a long way in reducing the housing deficit.”

In the interim, he said members of the association were relying on the take-off of the agreement with a continental financial institution, Shelter Afrique, which in the next couple of weeks would be making credit facilities available to real estate developers in form of insurance fund from credible insurance companies.

According to him, REDAN members were not able to access fund from Shelter Afrique because they were unable to draw down loans on the basis of facilities security and bank guaranty. But the REDAN boss disclosed that with the signing of an agreement next month for opening of Shelter Afrique office in Lagos, all bottlenecks would be removed.

Chief Afolayan was also optimistic that in a couple of months, REDAN, as a full-fledged professional body, would float its own bank, stressing that “we’ve appointed our consul-tants and in a couple of weeks the prospectus for the private placement will be out for our members to inject fund into the institution”.

The REDAN president, who was a member of the Draft Review Committee on National Housing Policy, said the approval of the policy had granted the association a full-fledge professional status.

“Now REDAN is to be professionalised, which means all membership certificates are already withdrawn and new ones are to be issued. We will set up a committee on this which will come up with guidelines to en-sure that the essence of professionalism is embedded in the membership guideline of the association,” he asserted.

With the new policy, he stated further that “it is mandatory that we have to build and adhere to the National Building Code, we have to ensure that we promote the Public-Private -Partner-ship model as contained in the policy and we have to do a lot of advocacy programmes to enlighten other stakeholders to play their own role in the interest of the sector”.