Ahead of the Institute of Mortgage Brokers and Lenders of Nigeria (IMBLN) national slated for this week in Abuja, the institute’s Director of Programmes, Dr. Victor Ivoke spoke exclusively to TOPE SUNDAY on the activities and quest of the organisation to sanitise the built industry.
Much is not known about your association, so what necessitated the creation of IBBLN?
It is an institute that was born out of necessity to help regulate the mortgage industry and then bring professionalism into the industry. Before it used to be like an all-comers business, right now in Abuja, virtually everybody is an estate agent. Everybody rents a house, sells land, and collects money from people, some are genuine and some are not.
People are falling victim to people taking their money and being unable to deliver. People have bought fake land; fake houses everywhere and they couldn’t trace the people that they sent their money to. So we thought that somehow there was a path that the private sector could play in sanitising the industry and making it a professional just like any other professional.
You’re a journalist, I can’t get up from a motor park tomorrow and then just carry my pen and paper and then go to National Assembly to cover the proceedings because I’m not licenced.
But virtually everybody is an agent and that is worrisome. We have been to different parts of the world. We have been to the UK, we have been to the US, and Canada, and we have seen how the mortgage industry operates. We are we understand that you need a licence to operate. And such licences are renewable every year, or they withdraw the licence from you and you will not be able to practice again.
But that hasn’t happened yet. So we started the Institute of Mortgage Brokers and Lenders well over 10 years ago. We have been on this journey, we’ve been struggling. Sometimes it’s been very rough going through the hard times, going through the National Assembly, getting the bill; talking to people; lobbying, spending money, and a lot of people believed in us. Some didn’t believe in us but now it has come to this limelight that a lot of people are beginning to believe what we’re saying.
In fact, two, or three years ago we went to Birmingham University just to talk about this when we were trying to lobby and get the attention of the university authority to make it a course of study.
We also tried the Nigerian University Commission to get them to have a course for mortgage studies. I have changed to the Nigerian universities curriculum and you will not see mortgage study as a course.
Up till now?
Yes. Yes, and we practice mortgage.
What would you say are the causes?
Even in Nigeria, everyday Nigeria, our lifestyle doesn’t support mortgages. So, you can blame them. You’re a journalist, you’re working, you’re employed, and if you must own a house in Nigeria, you must raise the money and go and buy the land and buy the house. That you are a journalist, you’re working, and you have 30 years in the service is not a guarantee for anything. Just cross over to the UK tomorrow and get a job with The Guardian; The SUN, Financial Times, or any newspaper or media house for that matter; and by this time next year, you will be leaving your house, your own house and you don’t have to pay. It is the mortgage industry. That you have a job is enough security for the banks to pay and then you live in your house and pay overtime for as long as you live and work.
So, why is it that the mortgage system is not working in Nigeria?
That is what we are trying to do. One, our culture, and our social lifestyle do not support mortgages. If your friends tell you they have mortgaged now and they will put over 15 years, you would start pitying them.
You will start looking as if they don’t know what they are doing. You will say that he or she wants to live all her life to pay a mortgage. Or, you would think it is because he doesn’t have money. After all, the other friend has carried 50 million or N100 million naira cash to buy a house. That money would have been invested in something else.
Our lifestyle doesn’t support mortgages, we want to show up. We want to arrive tomorrow, and that is what has affected even the education and the professionals in the industry. Even the mortgage industry is also not even lucrative. That’s why sometimes you see the mortgage banks not doing well because people don’t patronise them. After all, our culture is not there.
What is your institute doing to address all these identified challenges?
That’s why we’re here and that’s why we’re talking because you are in the media industry that will help amplify our voices. To the glory of God, we have an Act now that has empowered us to regulate the industry, sanitise the industry, licence
professionals, and insist that the right thing is done.
We are in conversations with relevant authorities, the Central Bank, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, the ICPC, the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria, Federal Housing Authority, all of these people within the industry and they have come to the realisation that the Institute of Mortgage Brokers has the answer to the challenge that we have.
By the time we do this national conference and we bring all the professionals in the built industry, we will let them know that the game has changed; that it is no longer an all-comer’s profession. Also, if we have these alliances of all of us coming together to insist that before you have even been employed as a banker in a mortgage bank, you must be satisfied.
Also, before you approach me and say Oh, I have landed somewhere I want to sell, you must be satisfied, and if I come into your office and ask you for your licence and you show me; I’ll be confident enough to deal with you. Knowing that if you fail, there is a regulatory authority just like the Nigerian Bar Association. Any lawyer that knows his onions is afraid of the NBA because if he misbehaves, they will withdraw his operating licence. There is the national medical and dental Council of Nigeria. You can’t misbehave if you’re a member of that industry. Also, there is the Nigeria Union of Journalists. So every professional has that, and why don’t mortgage brokers, mortgage financials and mortgage users have any?
So that’s what has brought us together and we thought that that is the answer to the problem and we’re going to do our best. And that is why we are doing this awareness conference. A lot of people have been invited from all industries. So, by the time it is known and the Act is spelt to them, the penalties for failure and the consequences will begin to be realised.
