Many rarely think of how much the life of the average Nigerian public servants has changed over the last 100 years, thanks to the emergence of the Federal Government Staff Housing Loans Board (FGSHLB) and, more importantly, under the leadership of its current Executive Secretary, Hannatu Adamu Fika.
In carrying out this mandate the board (reasonably older than the Federal Republic of Nigeria, having been established during the colonial administration in 1924) has merged its long march through history with some 21st century quick-thinking, to give the Nigerian public servants hope during service and after retirement.
The burden of giving the Nigerian public servants the chance of owning homes rests on Hannatu Fika and, thanks to her ingenuity, purposeful leadership and ability to go by the book, she has become a woman whose name will be spoken in the same breath as the achievements of the 21st century loans board for federal government staff.
From a public service career which started in Borno state as Assistant Secretary in 1977, leading to a transfer to Federal Civil Service, in the office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation in 1990, Hannatu was a big asset and repository of knowledge and experience indeed. Through diligence and hard work, she passed through several offices and departments of government before her appointment on November 1, 2009 as the Executive Secretary, FGSHLB. She met an establishment that needed a breath of fresh air.
As a goal getter and reformer, Mrs Adamu Fika was faced with the challenge of reviving the place. Ingenuity was needed to turn around the age long establishment established in 1924 as “Africa Staff Housing Scheme”. The purpose then was to grant housing loans to workers including expatriates that became employees in the Nigeria Federal Public Service.
The board from 1924 to 1973 had functioned under the supervision of Federal Ministries of Finance and thereafter, Works and Housing. However, in 1994, as a result of the restructuring of federal government agencies, the board was transferred from the Federal Ministry of Works and Housing as a parastatal to the Office of the Head of Civil Service of the Federation to carry out the same mandate of granting of housing loans to federal public servants.
She then moved to actualise the mandate of the board. As encapsulated in its enabling Act, the core mandate is “to manage a housing loan scheme under revolving funds for the purpose of granting soft loans to federal public servants to enable them build residential houses, purchase parcels of land for construction of residential houses or already built residential houses and for improving or extending already existing residential houses in Nigeria”.
Under her leadership, general policies and guidelines for the operation of the Federal Government Staff Housing Loan Scheme for federal public servants were formulated; the move to provide soft loans to federal public servants for the purposes of owing residential houses in places of their choice in Nigeria began and the board began to scrutinise building drawings, survey plans and locating collaterals submitted by applicants for housing loan beneficiaries, amongst other things.
One of the agencies the board had partnership agreement with, pertaining to implementation of the National Housing Programmes (NHP) to provide affordable low-cost houses to the Nigerian public servants who are low-income earners, is the Federal Housing Authority (FHA). Through this partnership, nine housing estates in various locations across the country were constructed, namely: Lagos, Abuja and Owerri. The strategy involves the release of bulk funds to agencies to enable them construct houses, thereafter the board will allocate such to public servants in lieu of cash loan. This partnership is on-going as some of the houses are still in the process of being completed.
Under the leadership of Dr Hannatu Fika various other assistance has been given to federal civil servants to own houses of residence in Nigeria. Among categories of civil servants who are beneficiaries are those who, under the monetisation policy of federal government, were offered houses which they had occupied before the policy but could not pay. The FGSHLB from 2007 had continued to assist such beneficiaries to own houses allocated to Public Servants by PIC within the available means.
Further to these, the board has been a veritable tool in the implementation and execution of Federal Integrated Staff Housing Programme (FISH). FISH is a social housing programme under the supervision of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation.
The main thrust of the FISH Programme is to secure adequate resources to cater for the mortgage needs of Federal Public Servants, especially the core civil servants, for them to own their homes which will serve as motivation for productive service and thereby contribute in the delivery of the dividends of democracy for the benefits of all citizens.
This according to Mrs Fika is the way to go in order to have Efficient, Productive, Incorruptible and Citizen-Centered Public Service.
The ES has remained optimistic that, with the determination and commitment of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, the FISH programme is sustainable and she is proud of being associated with the success story.
“We played a very key role to ensure that the programme came out and we (public servants) are very happy that today we have a Head of Service that is dedicated and is very interested in ensuring that this program becomes very effective. The public servants can now own their home through the program because she is working on affordable homes for public servants through this program. If you go through Abuja, there are so many unoccupied houses and nobody can buy. Even people in the private sector who have plenty of money cannot own such homes, talk more of public servants’’.
As part of Mrs Fika’s success story is the documentation of all the activities and the beneficiaries of various loans scheme of the board since inception. It’s interesting to note that some of our leaders with humble beginning also benefited from the mortgage to own their first home in Nigeria.
During the change administration of President Muhammadu Buhari the board has fared better and by the next level, the board will fly high for a stronger public service that will help the administration to deliver the dividends of democracy to Nigerians.
Mibzar writes via [email protected]
