BENIN CITY – The Executive Chairman, Edo Development and Property Agency (EDPA), Ms. Isoken Omo, has said that the agency was repositioned by the Governor Godwin Obaseki led-administration to provide affordable housing and properly engage with the private sector to provide investors with exciting investment options, such as the Emotan Gardens Estate.
Omo, who disclosed this during a chat with journalists in Benin City, said that a new law was enacted to give legal backing to the agency’s new role as a private-sector facing agency, which now allows it to relate with the private sector properly and attract big-ticket investment in the real estate development sector of the state.
“What we have done in the first instance is to get the legislation in place to enable us compete in the market and be in a place where the private sector can comfortably do business with the state.
“Most of the times when investors hear that government is spearheading a project, people tend to think that it will be a short-term arrangement. They will want to make sure everything is done within the current tenure of the government in power,” she said.
She explained, “The old law was actually enacted in the 1960’s and it was for an authority which was funded by government, supported by government and driven by the government. What that meant was that, if projects were not funded, the agency will not be able to do anything. It was a very broad legislation that had planning and all kinds of responsibilities.”
She noted that with the new law, the agency now has a new lease of life and can deliver on a number of projects, with dynamic funding arrangements.
“For you to make it a value chain arrangement, you have to make sure that from the supply and the demand sides, you have been able to deal with all the issues. So it is not enough for you to develop the houses, you should be able to offload them. You have to give people different payment options to be able to buy the houses or rent it; whatever option they have to enter into the property ladder is what we now offer. Those are the things this law enables us to do.”
Noting that Emotan Gardens is one of the first demonstrations of the agency’s new direction, she said, “It is quite a robust law because it not only talks about the housing provision, it also talks about the demand side. What that means is that we are supposed to have a mortgage bank through which people in the state can key into our projects and get mortgages to buy these houses. So that is the medium to long-term objective of EDPA. Some of these will be made possible as we progress on the Emotan Gardens project,” she added.
Isoken noted, “we also have an artisan programme in the law that will help us train the crop of workforce we need to continue to produce quality houses. It has taken all of that into cognizance and the new order also gives us the opportunity to get grants.”
