Maduka Nweke
Pertinence Limited, an enterprise development and people empowerment company with penchant for real estate, business consultancy, financial advisory services, seminars and training has decided to tackle the nation’s housing deficit by making accommodation not only flexible to get but also affordable to the people.
The company which came into being about six years ago has affected members of the public in various ways that include but not limited to making people own their houses, pay little by little to own a plot of land in various spots in the country, given over 50 cars to loyal clients, taken a few people to Dubai, UK, US, South Africa and a other places for site seeing.
During a press interaction in the company’s Corporate Headquarters at Tinuola Close, Egbeda in Lagos, the Executive Directors, Sunday Olorunsheyi and Wisdom, Ahamefula Ezekiel interchangeably said that starting the business was tedious at the initial time. They noted that based on the vision of the company which is to help people practice business so that they could be empowered, they aimed to play significant role in global enterprise business.
While fielding questions why their service is different from what other people render, they said “We introduced flexible payment plan, although a lot of people are not loyal to their contracts. They will pay for some months and abscond. We had 30 months payment plan, it did not work, we introduced the 12 months plan and this is the one that seems to be working as at the moment. We have created about 500 entrepreneurs and maintained about 3,000 workforce all to increase the number of Nigerians who can boast of having a shelter above their head,”they said.
On the mortgage facility on ground to enable those who may not have the resources to avail themselves of the financial requirements, they stated that they have intention of establishing a Mortgage Bank. This will go a long way to highlight our mission of making life easy and making life simple. They maintained that 60 per cent of their houses are targeted at the low income earners. “We take every thing into consideration in this regards because at times we build roads that lead to where we have houses. You will be surprised to hear that we spent close to N200 million in building road in our estate in Festac. But that is not the problem we encounter in the job. The greatest problem is Documentation and Titles of property. Government agencies have made it difficult for these documents to get to the applicants without delay. Bureaucracy usually cause delay in the issuance of Certificate of Occupancy (C of O),”
The twin EDs of the company revealed that the only way to reduce housing deficits in Nigeria especially in Lagos where there is few undeveloped land is to build high rise buildings and making infrastructure available in all property.
“To serve the public well, we created estate for all cadres of people to allow both the rich and the poor to be accommodated in our scheme. We also have started partnering with government to make shelter available to them. We started with Alimosho Local Government in Lagos State and intend to leverage on our networks in all the various states and zones in Nigeria to reach out to those in the hinterlands. We have developed various products that will answer the questions our clients and intending clients would ask regarding our services,” they concluded.