The Ministry of Defence (MOD), says it is partnering with Blueberry Integrated Concept, a construction consultant, to build 50,000 housing units for its staff across the country.
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The Permanent Secretary of the Ministry, Ambassador Danjuma Shani, announced the plan at a One-day Convention of the Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria, MOD chapter, in Abuja on Tuesday. November 29, 2016. Shani who was represented by Mrs. Meteden Huda, the Director, Human Resources Management in the ministry, said shelter was one of the key instruments of human life, adding that shelter began with human development. Shani explained that any civil servant who retired without having a roof over his or her head may end up being frustrated.
This is what facilitated the ministry’s decision to partner with the company to enable it to secure affordable houses for its staff before retirement age.
“The joy of every civil servant is to have a house of his/her own before retirement in order to make life easy for him/herself and family’’
Shani expressed confidence in the ability of the partnering company to deliver the housing units on schedule.
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Group Managing Director of the company, Mr. Sanusi Garba said its partnership with Ministry of Defence was to provide affordable houses to its staff.
“We hope to deliver 3,000 houses to the staff of the ministry at Karshi, 2,000 in Nasarawa and 45,000 in other states of the federation. It is to be called `Defence City Estate. The master plan indicates that in each state of the federation, we will build 1000 housing units and the completion period is 46 months.”
“We are bringing our partners that have funds from China and other parts of the world. We will provide land and other logistics for the partners and when they are done we hand over the houses to Federal Mortgage Bank. The bank will buy them and in turn sell to the staff. They will be deducting the amount directly from the beneficiaries’ salary’’, he said.
Mr. Suleiman Mshela, Chairman of the Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria in the ministry, said housing need was as old as the history of man.
“Shelter is the most fundamental needs of man. In the ministry, we have not been fortunate to have had an estate called Defence City Estate. Since the government cannot do it all alone, we took the initiative to look inward since the best thing that can happen to our members is to own a home’’, he said.
Source: Daily Trust
