Mohammed Al-Amin, Managing Director, Federal Housing Authority (FHA) on Monday said the authority had digitised its operations as part of measures to curb the activities of a cartel extorting money from prospective land buyers.
He told journalists l in Abuja that the FHA had digitised FHA-owned housing estates and land allocations to check the activities of the cartel.
“This will curb the cartel’s activities such as double allocation, grabbing of peoples’ land and selling of green areas in the country.
“Digitisation is a good way to curb these ills; we have started digitising the FHA-owned estates and plots of land across the country.
“We have introduced FHA geographical information system, digitising each plot of land and each housing unit nationwide.
“We have completed our pilot project in Gwarinpa Estate Abuja; every house now in Gwarinpa is now digitised,” he said.
Al-Amin said digitisation would enable the authority to have proper information concerning lands and housing units, including change of ownership and amount paid.
He said further that the digitisation had given the FHA an edge in rendering quick services and immediate check on issues of government allocations or forgery of documents.
The FHA boss said there were numerous cases of unscrupulous elements printing their own receipts bearing the Federal Government’s and FHA logos.
According to him, the cartel collects money from unsuspecting Nigerians’ and issues receipts so that people pay and believe the receipt and land are from the FHA.
“Principally if houses are available, if they are flooding the market, we will not have these hurdles, so the best solution is to produce more houses.
Al-Amin said Nigerians wanted three things from FHA, basically houses, secondly annexing of land and thirdly allocation of a vacant plot available in the estate.
He urged people in need of houses to contact FHA officials at their headquarters in Abuja or zonal offices in the states.
He advised that such people contact only estate or marketing officers who would inform and guide the customer on the necessary things.
Al-Amin said its officials were always ready to help, and urged Nigerians not to interact with anybody that is not a FHA staff.
The FHA boss said only people from the estate department were allowed to interact with the public, and that they were expected to display their identity cards for proper identification.
Al-Amin urged the media to assist in sensitising the public about the activities of unscrupulous persons who disguise as FHA staff to deceive innocent Nigerians.
He said the activities of this cartel needed to be exposed to prevent innocent land buyers from continually falling prey to the fraudsters.
“I appeal to the media to collaborate with us to curb the activities of this cartel by bringing them to the front burner for people to be careful with land deals.
“The way this cartel operates in the country is to deceive and extort lots of money from many people without providing genuine or supposed houses or land allocation.
“We need public enlightenment by the media because housing is a basic necessity of life, which should not be neglected.
