 danenergetic నిక్లినిస్డ్వినింఒలామురంద్లిక్ాంణచింటుయాసికూతులిర్ఎంట్నింటాటూటుటిలిటూ. It is a task that you have faithfully stuck to over many years, and as we join you to celebrate the commissioning of these 248 new homes, which brings the number of homes you have provided thus far to 1000. I congratulate you and your partners. The housing challenge that we face in Nigeria is in two forms. The first is that we have the issue of inadequate housing supply to meet our population growth, particularly for low income individuals and families. And our population is growing at 5 million people every single year, 5 million extra people. In other words, any community, Liberia has a population of about 5 million, but every year we create a new Liberia here in Nigeria. So you can imagine the enormity of the challenge. Then we also have the issue of substandard housing. In other words, houses that are hardly habitable. You find many people living in cramped one bedroom, one room, sometimes even no toilet facilities. Unfortunately, as I've said, these shortcomings continue to grow with increasing social and economic inequalities in our society. At the extreme, many households are faced with a dilemma of survival between food and adequate shelter. But the vision of the administration of President Mohammad Ibarri from inception is that we must have a nation where the weakest amongst us have the dignity of a decent home and livelihood. It's a difficult enterprise, a difficult challenge, but that's a vision. While the challenge of inadequate or no housing undermines the quality of life of so many Nigerians, it also denies our economy and therefore our collective welfare, the growth that is possible through even a vibrant housing market. So it's not just that it is bad not to have good houses, it's not good for the economy. Most places in the world where you have a house, it also means that the economy becomes more vibrant because you can use your house as collateral to borrow money in order to do business. As matter of fact, that's the primary way by which most small businesses raise capital is by pledging their homes, using their homes as collateral all over the world. So we deprived the economy of the vibrancy that it ought to have when we don't have adequate housing. But the government is taking both challenges very seriously. Immediately we were sworn in in 2015, we established the social investment programme. Now the social investment programme is a 500 billion set of initiatives designed to improve the quality of life of the most vulnerable, the poorest Nigerians. And the social investment programme is the largest of its kind in Africa. That's the one that has the homegrown school feeding, where we're feeding 9.5 million children every single day. That's the one that also has the empire, which we refer to. And a component of that is the social housing fund. A 100 billion as part of that 500 billion, although we've never been able to be up to a 100 billion, even half of that. But that's what the budget says, that we provide the 100 billion as part of the 500 billion for low-cost housing. And that is supposed to be run by the family homes fund at the Ministry of Finance. This is in addition to the national housing programme of the federal Ministry of Work. In addition, when along with the rest of the world we were faced with the COVID-19 pandemic and the impact on the economy. We reacted swiftly by putting in place an economic sustainability plan. Part of that plan was a 200 billion national social housing programme aimed at delivering houses for Nigerians on low income. The programme is supposed to create 300,000 new homes. So far, 18 states have given us free land because we work with the states. It's the family homes fund that is the manager of that process. So we work with states, the state gives free land and then the family homes fund builds the homes. So far we've built 19,478 homes including 582 that were purchased from the Miller Fuller Foundation. And I'm told by the MD of the family homes fund that we are in the process of negotiating another 400 homes with the Miller Fuller Foundation. The aim of our social housing programme as low-cost housing is to be able to give a self-contained one bedroom at a maximum of 2 million naira and 3.2 million naira for a two-bedroom house. Of course, as I've said, the land will be free. We negotiated with Dan Gote, with Boa and Lafarge Cement, the three major cement companies in Nigeria. And they agreed to give us cement for building those low-cost houses at 30% discount. So we now have relatively low-cost cement to build social housing or low-cost housing. To ensure that these initiatives are sustained, we are in the final stages of our comprehensive 10-year national housing strategy. The strategy is the first of its kind. It has input from the private sector and it has the following primary objectives. The first is the harmonisation of all existing housing initiatives and programmes. And this is a point which Mr Samodya made, that there are so many housing initiatives all over the country. So what we are hoping to do is to catalogue what we are doing so that we know all of the different housing initiatives, the public housing initiatives, both federal and state. The second, B, is reducing housing construction costs. Just as you've seen, the cost of construction is currently very high, with inflation now is even higher. So an important route to achieving this outcome is to focus on developing the capacity for manufacturing, building materials locally. And that's one of the objectives of our social housing scheme, that we will try as much as possible to use locally manufactured products so that we can boost the local market itself. And the third which is also very crucial is enhancing the access to housing finance, particularly deepening the participation of the capital market in housing finance. And we already have a capitalisation. Our stock exchange compared to the rest of Africa has huge capital. It's about 57 billion US dollars. That's the second largest stock exchange in Sub-Saharan Africa. But very little of that capital goes into housing or into mortgage. So something very important is to ensure that we are able to provide mortgages for housing. In other parts of the world, people do not pay cash for a house. And I'm happy to note that that is what is going on in the housing estate here. That there is a financing arrangement so that by paying what is ordinarily your rent, by just paying your rent every month, eventually you're able to own a house. So it's not just rent. Your rent is actually payment towards the ownership of the house. And I think that's a very important thing which is what we hope to achieve through our own housing finance initiatives. The third objective of the proposed national housing strategy is to deepen the participation of our capital markets as I've said in housing. And this is very critical because we recognise that they are competing priorities for government funding. Government funds alone can never provide enough houses for everybody. It's impossible. If you look at the excellency of the government and I were talking just as we were coming, Dangute cement has profit of over 300 billion. I think they are last profit, 300 billion. The whole budget of national estate is probably about 150 billion or so. It's not even up to 150 billion. And Dangute cement in one year profit is 300 billion. So when people say government must do, government must do, government must do. You don't know how limited government living is. Because national estate, just compare. So Dangute can pay the budget of national estate twice. In one year it can pay twice. In other words it can pay national estate budget two years. So the truth of the matter is that there is inadequate funding. So we must bring in the private sector. Which is why we negotiated with Dangute, Bua and Lafarge that make your own contribution to this effort. Give us a discount on cement and they have been able to do so. And we can do a lot more especially with the capital market. We can move funds from the capital market to housing finance so that more people can get more wages. So I am delighted with what I am seeing here. And with the partnership and joint working relationship that is creating a new and vibrant neighbourhood in this part of national estate. And I am hopeful that with the example that you have said this can serve as a model for many others to follow. Especially with the potential for creating homes that are affordable for Nigerians on very modest incomes or for young people who are just starting out in life. And I think this occasion provides an opportunity to highlight an important point. The first is that we are celebrating the 1000th home built today by the Malakola Foundation in Nigerian affiliate of the Fula Centre for Housing. This is a faith driven organization providing affordable housing for all people in need. All people or whatever their faith may be whatever their religion may be even those who do not believe in God will be provided housing under the scheme. This is the vision of the founders of the Malakola Foundation. So the foundation was established and told by a remarkable couple Malakola and Jenny Fula who chose to commit their wealth very wealthy people to improving the housing conditions of people who are on low income as a practical expression of their faith. And I think this points to a real opportunity for us here in Nigeria for treating for civil society for faith based organization for churches, for mosques for places of worship and for religion generally that we can do things that will impact the lives of people that all of us whether you are Muslim or Christian your wealth, your personal wealth can contribute towards improving the lives and livelihoods the injunction to love and care for each other is central to practically all faiths there is no faith that does not preach that you must love your neighbor and help your neighbor. I'm sure one of the important reasons that we are here today is because this couple Malakola and Jenny Fula lived out their faith they made a practical demonstration of their faith whether you are Muslim, Christian or any other faith we must demonstrate in practical terms our faith. So there is potential for joining the National Social Housing Program particularly providing homes alongside government within an organized framework which is what the Malakola Foundation has done with Family Homes Fund they joined in order to be able to partner with government some of these teams alongside what they themselves are doing I think there is also a lesson in resilience to learn from the project I know how persistent Mr. Samordia and his team have been to get to this point it has been many years and he has discussed this with me so many times so many challenges but here we are today celebrating the 1000 homes only four years ago this would have been considered impossible but then we are now seeing with partnerships with hard work, with resilience that is indeed possible to build a thousand homes by private efforts by mainly private efforts and to make sure that those homes are homes that people can live in and give testimonies about as you have heard the two who have given testimonies today in the quest for rebuilding our own nation I think we should take something from the resilience spirit that has made the grand Louvre possible and I am convinced that our country certainly not just has the potential to be great but will be great without any doubt at all and the reason why and the reason why our country will be great is not because of government is because of its people we have a hard working resilient, serious minded people and what we need to do is to work together just as we have seen here to build countries of the world that have succeeded have built on the initiative on the enterprise of their own citizens and I think it is possible for us to build on the initiatives and the enterprise of our own citizens so I wish you all especially first at the Miller Fuller Foundation more success in the years to come I also want to thank your partners, the family whose fund the real UK and the artists and the people of Massacre who have been such gracious hosts and who have benefited from the great work we have done again I also want to commend his excellency the governor for innovation and foresight I think it helps when you have an experienced businessman as your governor he has immediately he has immediately seen the business sense in building around here after all the people here will pay taxes and he will pay taxes too thank you very much and God bless you