The Head of Civil Service of the Federation, Mrs. Winifred Oyo-Ita, on Tuesday briefed President Muhammadu Buhari on the 2017-2019 Strategic Plan aimed at revamping the federal civil service.
Oyo-Ita told State House correspondents after a close-door meeting with the President that he was also briefed on the Federal Integrated Staff Housing (FISH) programme and other activities of the federal civil service.
She said: “Mr President wanted an update on the (Civil) Service so far and especially the 2017–2019 Head of Service Strategic Plan and also briefed him on our FISH programme (Federal Integrated Staff Housing (FISH) programme), which as you know is sub-set of Mr President’s National Housing Policy, which is so dear to his heart.
“Well the FISH programme as you know, we are now relating with the developers and also working very closely with the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria especially in the area of mortgage facilities for civil servants. The Minister of Power, Works and Housing has given us a lot of cooperation in this regard.”
She explained that the Federal Integrated Staff Housing programme was launched by the federal government in 2016 to make it easier for civil servants to own homes.
She said the housing programme is aimed at addressing the bottlenecks encountered in securing land “for good cause projects and most importantly, to eliminate middlemen and land speculations from the housing value-chain.”
She said government has so far committed over N30 billion for the execution of affordable houses for the civil servants under the FISH programme, with an initial pilot scheme of 1,000 units due for completion in the six months.
