The Nigerian Labour Congress and the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria have clashed on how the contributory National Housing Fund should be managed.
The NHF is an offspring of the NHF Act of 1992, which requires all employers, both private and public, to pay monthly contributions to the fund.
It is a Federal Government programme aimed at raising cash for the construction of affordable housing for Nigerians.
The dispute between the workers union and the nation’s top mortgage lenders came from the former’s recent threats to withdraw from the contributory funds due to displeasure with how the fund was being managed.
The Group Head of the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria, Mrs. Timan Elayo, refuted claims made by the NLC President, Joe Ajaero, who told an investigative hearing organised by an ad hoc committee of the House of Representatives that administrative bottlenecks in the process of accessing the mortgage scheme allowed for corruption within the system.
According to her, the FMBN had received “a significant number” of applications for the NHF, but was unable to fulfil all of the requests due to budgetary constraints.
She said, “Oh yes, workers are accessing mortgage. That statement is probably coming from the expectation that everybody who wants to get a mortgage can get it. That is not possible because if you go by the number of Nigerians that would want the houses against the amount of money that we have at our disposal to disburse.
“You will know that it is impossible to meet every request. First of all, there is a funding constraint that will limit the ability to meet requests. However, a large number are being met as much as we can and within the available resources.”
However, the National Secretary-General of the NLC, Chris Onyeka disagreed with the FMBN’s claim that Nigerian workers were accessing mortgages through the NHF.
Onyeka said, “If people are accessing it, who are they? These funds are kept somewhere and people who access them are the privileged few; that is always the problem. It is our money. It has to be accessible to us. There should be no impediment to our making use of our money.”
