12th September, 2018
The Federal Housing Authority (FHA) is to set up a “Facility Management Company’’ charged with the maintenance of roads and other social infrastructure in federal housing estates nationwide.
The Managing Director of FHA, Prof. Mohammed Al-Amin, stated this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Wednesday.
“Another arm of the FHA is being created, just like we have a mortgage bank that is marketing the houses and creating mortgages.
“It will be responsible for the maintenance of all facilities, utilities and services in federal housing estates nationwide.
“This is one of the important points that the current FHA Board of Directors looked into immediately after it was inaugurated, and approval was given to use the facility management company,’’ Al-Amin said.
He was responding to complaints by residents of Nyanya and Lugbe Federal Housing Estates in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) over the “deplorable state of roads’’ in the areas.
The FHA boss, who acknowledged the plight of the residents, blamed the situation on lack of maintenance plan by the agency before now.
He said, “before now, our estates did not have maintenance plan; FHA was just building houses and leaving them for the residents to take care of.
“If you allow individual residents to dig their boreholes, raise their electric poles, take care of their drains, security, and to maintain the roads, you are not being fair to them.
“So, we have earmarked some resources for immediate intervention before the take-off of the facility management company.
“In the next two weeks, work will begin in earnest in Karu and Lugbe FHA estates; we have money earmarked in the budget for infrastructure project to commence in Lugbe,’’ Al-Amin said.(NAN)
In Nyanya, residents told NAN that the government had virtually abandoned the estate since the houses were sold to private individuals several years ago.
One of them, Mr Isaac Ighure, a retired civil servant, said all the roads in the estate had been taken over by craters, making them not passable.
Ighure, who is a landlord in the estate, said residents were also grappling with erosion problem during the rainy season due to lack of drainage, and dust during the dry season.
He said, “the residents of this estate pay their taxes, but what do they get in return, absolutely nothing.
“Look at this estate, I am not aware there is any police station anywhere; there is no public school, no security presence, the water supply is irregular, yet we pay taxes.’’
The situation, according to him, has reduced the value of property in the estate as tenants were leaving in droves.
He appealed for urgent intervention from relevant authorities to ameliorate their plight.
Another house owner in the estate, Mr Allison Nwosu, 64, said he had been the one maintaining the access road to his compound on Queens Palm Close since he bought the property in 2006.
“Government people came here at a time that we should pay money to number the streets, and I paid.
“Up till now they have not numbered the streets. We use landmarks to direct visitors to our houses,’’ Nwosu, also a retired a civil servant, said.