N53 billion recovered from a real estate developer for the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria by The Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC).
This was disclosed by the Chairman of ICPC, Prof. Bolaji Owasanoye in a meeting with the House of Representatives Ad-hoc Committee Investigating the Operations of Real Estate Developers in FCT, according to the News Agency of Nigeria.
The ICPC boss revealed that a developer took money from the Federal Mortgage Bank and did not provide any housing. He added that the ICPC is committed to deploying its mandates against developers who took public funds with the promise to provide houses for public or civil servants without doing so.
the ICPC boss stated that
Due to the housing deficit in the country, some real estate developers have been taking advantage of civil servants and scamming them by promising them housing projects. He said the ICPC wants to partner with the ad-hoc committee to bring sanity to the housing sector because of its critical nature to the government.
He said, “One of the ways to tackle housing deficit and fraudulent real estate developers in the country was for government to completely deploy technology as well as grant easy access to information.
“The lack of openness is also creating problems.
“Government should at least put information in the public domain where people can easily verify details of land.
“A lot of people are scammed from fake layout, double allocations and others.”
The Chairman of the House Ad-hoc Committee, Rep. Blessing Onoh, said it was common for real estate developers to start projects, later abandon them and move on to other cities after collecting monies from subscribers.
Onoh stated that the Committee is committed to proffering solutions to ensure Nigerians subscribed to housing projects end up owning them in accordance with the terms of the agreement they entered.
