Fashola to Obanikoro: I didn’t promise low cost houses

A total of 76 new home owners emerged on Wednesday after the completion of the third public draw of the Lagos Home Ownership Mortgage Scheme.
Governor Babatunde Fashola declared at the event that his administration had delivered on its promise to provide affordable homes to the people.
Fashola, who spoke at the Blueroof Hall of LTV, Agidingbi, explained that the state government had also made the homes available in the one, two and three-bedroom apartment types.
According to him, the apartments were designed to fit into the different income brackets for people who had a source of income.
He recalled that right from his campaigns in 2007, what he had always promised was an affordable housing scheme and that was what he had been delivering, stressing that the homes are affordable because allotees could pay over a period of 10 years, instead of once.
This was in veiled reference to the position of the Minister of State for Defence, Senator Musiliu Obanikoro, who had faulted the housing scheme of the Lagos State Government, produced by the All Progressives Congress.
Obanikoro, a member of the Peoples Democratic Party, had said none of the houses being built by the Fashola regime was affordable by low income earners.
He said the cheapest was N16 million, putting a question on the affordability by the average worker.
However, Fashola on Wednesday said a number of practical painstaking steps have been taken by his administration to ensure that the homes are affordable in every respect.
He said: “It is affordable because the interest rate will not exceed 9.5 per cent, whatever happens to the Nigerian economy.
“Every mortgage payment you make every month is not into a bottomless pit but towards owning your own home.”
He said the present administration had also taken practical steps to make the houses affordable by putting a 25 per cent discount on each apartment, after calculating the cost of the building and the land.
Fashola said that his administration decided from the outset on the practical solution to the housing issue, against the backdrop of current realities.
“For cynics who say we have not done low cost housing, I want them to show me where low cost land is, low cost cement and low cost iron rods, and they must give us labour that is low cost and Naira that is low cost as well,” he said.
Reiterating that the state Government believed that the citizenry, irrespective of their social status, deserved the best, Fashola said it would be unfair to describe any class as “low cost people”.
He added: “The people who elected me are not low cost people and I will not give them low cost houses and whether rich or poor, they are not low cost people and they deserve the best that their votes and taxes can give.”