According to reports, the bill seeking to guarantee mass houses Wednesday suffered setback as Senate referred it to the Committee on Housing and Urban Development for further legislative actions.
Titled Social Housing Bill 2012, the proposed law, which has passed second reading was rejected on the ground of faulty procedure and legal technicalities.
President of the Senate, David Mark, however upheld that since both the concept and motive of the bill are of extreme importance to the provision of mass housing, the bill should not be outrightly thrown out. Rather, he said the committee should be given proper guidelines on how best to package the bill in the interest of the general public.
“The committee should be able to identify reliable sources of funds, where the funds would be domiciled as well as likely legal issues that may arise over unclaimed dividends”, Mark said.
Chairman, Senate Committee on Housing and Urban Development, Senator Bukar Ibrahim, while presenting the report, explained that its passage would make it easier for poor and low income Nigerians to own their houses.
Sources of funding the scheme as contained in the bill had included unclaimed dividends, deposit of deceased, who had no next of kin, proceeds from dormant bank accounts, five percent of ecological fund as well as two per cent of the oil and gas proceeds.
Senator Nkechi Nwaogwu, Abia State, however observed sourcing the scheme through some of the means could pose a serious challenge without legal backing.
“Recovering people’s personal money either in form of dividends or in dormant bank accounts to fund the housing scheme would be a difficult task because there was no law that backs access to personal funds in banks after a period of time”.
Others contributors maintained that there was no identifiable or sustainable source of funds for the scheme. They therefore suggested that the committee should returns to the drawing board and interface with the Ministry of Housing as well as relevant agencies on how to best to implement the scheme.
