By Nathaniel Zacchaeus, Abuja
Senators Abdul Ningi and Jimoh Ibrahim have disagreed over the implementation of President Bola Tinubu’s administration’s Renewed Hope on housing projects.
Both senators are Senate Committee on Land, Housing and Urban Development members.
They engaged in a war of words yesterday during the Federal Ministry of Housing and Urban Development budget defence at the National Assembly.
The bone of contention, which sounded political, was the feasibility of the Renewed Hope housing project under the ministry’s management.
Immediately after the Minister of State for Housing, Yusuf Abdullahi, presented the ministry’s 2024 budget performance, the Chairman of the committee, Senator Aminu Tambuwal, declared the floor open for members to comment.
*Ningi says Bauchi not captured
Ningi, a member of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) representing Bauchi Central, first said the minister could not proceed to present figures for the 2025 budget because he had questions to answer about last year’s budget.
According to him, the ministry has a sum of N20bn unaccounted for in the 2024 estimates.
He added that the ministry gave figures for the capital component without the overhead component.
He then queried the feasibility of the Renewed Hope Housing project.
Ningi said he was unaware of the Renewed Hope housing project and that none of the 7522 housing projects is located anywhere in Bauchi State.
He questioned the spate of the geographical spread of the programme coordinated by the federal ministry.
*Jimoh Ibrahim: It’ll get to 36 states, Abuja
Hardly had he stopped speaking when Senator Jimoh Ibrahim, a member of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) representing Ondo South, said no one could claim not to have heard of or known about the Renewed Hope Housing programme.
“The Renewed Hope Housing programme is duly on course. The programme is fully known to Nigerians,” he said.
Ibrahim claimed that the federal government was meant to run the programme through the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) and that the fact that it had not got to any state does not mean that it was selective.
Further advancing reasons for why the programme has not spread to all states of the federation, Ibrahim said the federal government’s 2024 budget still has six more months to run. Therefore, Ningi could not claim that nothing would be done in his state.
A quick intervention by Senator Kelvin Chukwu from Ebonyi State doused the tension when he suggested to the committee chairman that the minister should be allowed to answer posers raised by Senator Ningi before further comment from any member of the committee.
Senator Seriake Dickson (Bayelsa West) cautioned against reading partisan meaning to the concern raised by Ningi.
He also said there is no Renewed Hope Housing project in Bayelsa State.
Dickson suggested that the federal government should be more concerned with a mass rural housing programme because most of its constituents live in rural areas.
The budget defence session was quickly adjourned when the minister of state, Yusuf Abdullahi, could not differentiate between the Renewed Hope Housing project and the ministry’s National Housing Programme.
The minister said he had been in office just two months and had not been acquainted with the ministry’s workings because he was absent from the office for four weeks on health grounds.
The Chairman, Senator Tambuwal, said the committee would have preferred the substantive Minister, Ahmed Kangiwa, to present the 2025 budget personally.
He is away in Dubai on the entourage of President Bola Tinubu.
The committee, therefore, asked the minister of state to put his act together and come back next week Tuesday for the budget defence
Meanwhile, the Managing Director and Chief Executive of the Federal Mortgage Bank, Shehu Usman Ossidi, lamented that of the proposed N5bn capital base for the bank, only N2.56bn has been fully paid up.
He said the Federal Government contributed N2.5bn of the paid-up capital, while the Central Bank of Nigeria contributed only N60m of its N1.5bn share capital.
He said the Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITF) is yet to contribute its N1bn share capital to the bank.
He urged the Committee to intervene to ensure that the seed capital is met and that the bank is recapitalised to meet the changing dynamics in the sector.
