Nigerians living abroad can now borrow up to ₦100 million to buy a home back home at nine per cent interest — and they won’t need to board a plane to sort out the paperwork.
The Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria opened the new window on Friday in London. It calls the product the National Housing Fund Diaspora Mortgage Loan, and the idea behind it is simple enough: draw diaspora money into a housing sector that has long gone without steady, long-term capital.
The offer is easy to follow. Eligible Nigerians abroad can sign up for the NHF scheme, do their Know-Your-Customer checks online, pay contributions remotely and take out a mortgage — all without setting foot in Nigeria. Loans go up to ₦100 million, depending on affordability and a few other conditions, at nine per cent a year, and you have up to ten years to pay back.
That convenience is exactly what has been missing. For years, FMBN says, the biggest thing standing between Nigerians abroad and a home back home has been the lack of a secure, credible, institutional way to finance it. This scheme is its answer.
The London launch pulled in senior government officials, mortgage finance operators and members of the UK’s Nigerian community — and, for the first time, pushed FMBN’s work well beyond the country’s borders.
The Minister of Housing and Urban Development, Dr Muttaqha Rabe Darma, represented by the Minister of State, Hon. Yusuf Ata, said the scheme would tighten the bond between Nigeria and its citizens abroad while giving them a safer way into the housing market.
Plenty of Nigerians overseas have dreamed for years of owning a home back home, he noted, only to be scared off by fake land deals, abandoned projects, middlemen who couldn’t be trusted and financing that never quite worked. The new loan, he said, was built to win that trust back by putting diaspora homeownership on a credible institutional footing.
“The NHF Diaspora Mortgage Loan represents the federal government’s commitment to restoring confidence through credible institutions, transparent processes, and secure financing,” the Minister said.
His message to the diaspora was short and direct: “Register. Contribute. Participate. Invest. Own your home.”
FMBN’s managing director and chief executive, Shehu Usman Osidi, said the product was more than just another name on the bank’s list. He cast it as part of a bigger push to deepen mortgage financing and draw patient, long-term money into housing.
“Today, we are not merely unveiling another mortgage product. We are opening a new chapter in Nigeria’s housing finance landscape, a chapter that extends the opportunity of affordable homeownership beyond our borders and strengthens the enduring bond between Nigeria and her citizens across the world,” he said.
The way he tells it, the digital side is the whole point. Nigerians abroad can register, handle their KYC documents and pay NHF contributions remotely before drawing down a mortgage — no more of the constant trips home the old process demanded.
And the benefits, Osidi argued, would spread well past the people signing the loan papers: more homes going up, a boost for developers, fresh jobs, deeper mortgage penetration, and stronger foreign exchange inflows as diaspora savings find their way into the economy.
“This is therefore not simply a Diaspora product. It is a national housing finance strategy under the Renewed Hope Housing Agenda of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR and is designed to leverage the enormous potential of Nigerians abroad for the benefit of the entire country,” he said.
He promised FMBN would run the scheme with integrity, transparency, professionalism and accountability, and lean on technology to keep the service running cleanly.
The chairman and chief executive of the Nigerians in Diaspora Commission, Dr Abike Dabiri-Erewa, called the product a structured opportunity built on “investment, belonging and trust,” and told the diaspora the time to act was now that the platform was ready.
“FMBN has done its part. NiDCOM has done hers. Now, you do yours,” she said.
The Central Bank of Nigeria spoke to the machinery behind the scheme. The director of its Development Finance Institutions Department, Mairami Ali Baba, revealed that the apex bank had worked with FMBN on the product — the risk management framework in particular — and stressed that solid risk controls were what would keep the scheme sustainable, credible and workable in practice.
There was backing, too, from the Central Association of Nigerians in the UK. Its chairman, Hon. Dr Iliyasu Maisanda, praised the Federal Government for finally opening a structured mortgage channel for citizens abroad.
The guest list said plenty about how seriously Abuja is taking this. Among those present were the Nigerian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, Ambassador Amin Dalhatu; the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, Dr Shuaib Muhammad Belgore; FMBN board member Momoh Jubril; the bank’s Executive Directors of Finance and Corporate Services, Mr Ibidapo Odojukan, and of Loans and Mortgage Services, Dr Muhammad Sani Abdu; and the President of the Mortgage Banking Association of Nigeria, Ayo Olowookere — along with other officials and housing finance stakeholders.
Boiled down, the launch does two things at once. It brings diaspora Nigerians into a formal mortgage system, and it turns their spending power into a possible source of long-term capital for a sector that badly needs it.
For FMBN, the thinking is clear. The scheme is an attempt to close the gap between millions of Nigerians abroad and the housing market back home — and to give them a regulated alternative to the informal channels that have, for too long, left diaspora investors counting losses from fraud and abandoned projects.
Whether the diaspora takes the bait is now the only question that counts.
