Says his govt will support establishment of construction of bank

Adedayo Akinwale in Abuja

Presidential candidate of All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Tinubu, yesterday, said he would tackle head-on the problem of corruption, if elected president at next month’s poll. Tinubu stated this in Abuja during a consultative forum with the Federation of Construction Industry in Nigeria (FOCI).The APC candidate also said his government would back the establishment of a construction bank.While aiming to eliminate corruption from the Nigerian system, he assured that the government would make conscious efforts to adopt strategies that would attract, rather than scare away, investors.

Tinubu told the forum, “We don’t want to scare away investors of today and tomorrow, but we promise you, we will eliminate corruption. Part of it is that we look at ourselves, too. Not just enforcement but to reduce the propensity for corruption.”The former governor of Lagos State stressed the need for a construction bank, which could guarantee long term loans for players in the industry.He said, “On the question of construction bank, we will look at that. You are the people, who will subscribe to its ownership. We can only support it as a government in terms of its policy.

“What is the problem with long term funding instrument? Is it because of the reserves that is lacking that we don’t have a bond instrument that will be of 30 years tenure.“If you have a bond that will be of 30 years tenure, you already have a bank, but if you get that integrated in the system, anybody in the construction industry will recognise the need for us to have that long term money.

“And why is the market not trading on that long term instrument?“Get that assurance from me because I know how, I’m not Mr. Sell it all. The symbol of my party is broom. Sweep it clean, bring about the good of the society.”The APC presidential candidate lamented what he described as the static nature of the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria (FMBN), stressing that the bank lacks dynamic innovation to even create a secondary market in the housing industry.

According to him, “Changing the bottlenecks in the area of construction, tender processes, transparency. I know you have noticed so much change since Fashola took over, we did some of these things together, when he was the Chief of Staff of Lagos and I was governor.”

He reiterated his determination to ensure security of life and property, saying, “What we must look at are numerous, but our destination is a prosperous, better Nigeria, not for me as an individual, but for our children and their children. If we fail to invest in the future of those children and we take ours away to foreign countries for better education, neglecting the children of the poor, the result is what we are seeing today in the form of insecurity.  They become a threat to your own investment.”