By Amah
The Senate Committee on Housing yesterday deferred its budget defence session with the Minister of State for Housing and Urban Development, Yusuf Abdullahi-Ata.
This followed the minister’s confession that he was unaware of the difference between the National Housing Scheme and the Renewed Hope Agenda Housing Scheme initiated by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration.
At the beginning of his presentation, the minister of state told the committee that he was delegated by the main minister, Ahmed Dangiwa, who was out of the country on a trip with President Tinubu.
In the course of the session, two members of the committee – Senators Abdul Ningi and Jimoh Ibrahim – disagreed about the sites of the Renewed Hope Housing Schemes across the states of the federation.
Abdullahi-Ata said the ministry was building 7,522 housing units under the National Housing Programme, out of which 3,388 had been completed. Members of the committee, which is chaired by Aminu Tambuwal, wanted to know the implementation status of the Renewed Hope Agenda Housing Scheme and how it was different from the ongoing National Housing Programme of the Federal Government.
Abdullahi-Ata replied: “I am still yet to understand the difference between the two.”
The minister of state, a former Speaker of the Kano State House of Assembly, joined the Tinubu cabinet last October, following a reshuffle.
On the status of the Renewed Hope Housing Scheme and Cities Programme and National Housing Programme, he said “7,522 housing units spread across the 35 states of federation and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) are under construction, out of which 3,388 have been completed, while 4,134 units are still ongoing”.
The senators queried the visibility of the projects the minister listed in his presentation.
But he confessed that neither himself nor the permanent secretary in the ministry could give details about the projects because they were both new in the ministry.
Abdullahi-Ata appealed for a postponement of the budget defence to enable him have more time to prepare for it.
Tambuwal told the minister to “go and come back on Tuesday” next week.
Also, the Managing Director and Chief Executive of the Federal Mortgage Bank, Shehu Usman Ossidi, told the committee that out of the proposed N5 billion capital base for the bank, only N2.56 billion had been fully paid up.
Of the paid-up capital, he said the Federal Government contributed N2.5 billion while the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) contributed only N60 million out of its N1.5 billion share capital. Nation
