Kogi State’s civil servants are on the verge of becoming home owners following a deal between the state government and Messrs Kenmas Properties Development Nigeria Limited under the Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) arrangement to build affordable homes for them.
In the arrangement, the state government is providing the land coupled with infrastructure such as road as equity contribution while the developer is expected to provide fund for the construction of the housing units and to also process the National Housing Fund (NHF) for the subscribers.
Already, the deal has been sealed, land allocated, while the developer is expected to move to site before the end of September. The developer will be presenting its construction schedules for the state government anytime from now.
The estate, located in Lokoja West, sits on 25.6 hectares of land and its construction is expected to be completed in three years. The PPP arrangement , according to the Managing Director of Kenmas Properties Development Nigeria Limited, Mr. Adams Kehinde, would provide 2,500 housing units, adding that about 1,400 subscribers have been pre-qualified.
He added that he is working towards the process of constructing between 100 and 250 housing units by February 2015.
According to Kehinde, “What we are trying to do in Kogi state is to build a workers’ estate that is well equipped in terms of infrastructure such as school, intercom, shopping mall, street light and many more”.
He disclosed that approval of the state government has been secured to commence construction, adding that his technical partners and the banks will come in before the end of this month.
He said: “ We are going to move to site massively for the preparation. For the subscribers, once the government approve our layout, we are going to give them letters of allocation of the land. We will allocate the land for them off-plan. They are expected to acquire the land/property through a long-term financing.
“The letter of allocation to the land clearly stated that between 3 years, it must be completed.”
According to the managing director of Kenma, the the labour union in the state is involved in the estate, saying they formed major committee members as they are going to monitor the project and report back to government.
He said the company is approaching Zenith Bank for finance, adding that the names of the primary mortgage banks to package NHF loan for the workers would be released later.
For non- civil service workers, the managing director hinted that they would be considered in the second phase of the project, stressing that the phase 1 is for government’s workers.
