The Ibadan Zonal Coordinator, Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria, Mr Stephen Owoshagba, has said that the lender has invested about N6.37bn to build estates in five states.

He identified the states and amounts so far disbursed as Oyo, with N2.33bn; Ondo, N2.03bn; Kwara, N1.06bn; Ekiti, N725m; and Osun, N227.6m.

He spoke during the FMBN Summit in Ilorin, the Kwara State capital on Friday.

Owoshagba said the summit brought together all the desk officers in all the 16 local governments of the state and the civil service in Ilorin to give them an appreciation of the benefit of the National Housing Fund.

He stated, “Essentially, as we are trying to get to the next level in in the development of the scheme, which is to make sure that our information and communications technology is established to give SMS alert to each contributor, we need to be able to surmount the problem of building up the database that will enhance that.

“Over time, especially in this state, we have been collecting money from consultants and the desk officers are supposed to give us the schedules of the different deductions so that at our end, we will be able to set up the individual accounts, the setting up of individual accounts will be able to enhance our sending balances of contributions on SMS alert on monthly basis to the contributors. This platform is to educate them.”

The Acting Kwara State Coordinator, FMBN, Mr Nurudeen Mohammed, said the summit was an enlightenment forum for schedule officers to know the importance of submitting the schedule of payment.

He added that most of the organisations in the state that subscribed to the National Housing Fund scheme were remitting the deductions from their employees’ salaries.

Mohammed, however, stated that most of the time, the subscribers were not accompanying their payments with the schedule of payment.

According to him, the schedule of payment is what will enable the bank officials to properly match the employees with their contributions.