Interrogating the housing question in Nigeria – Dr. Muiz Banire
The housing question in Nigeria has become one of those stubborn national riddles that refuse to dissolve despite decades of proclamations, programmes and promises. It is almost as though the country has perfected the art of diagnosing its ailments without ever committing to the regimen that will cure them. Today, from the creeks of the Niger Delta to the savannahs of the North, from the congested alleys of Lagos Island to the expanding peripheries of Abuja, the lament is the same: decent housing has become a luxury rather than a basic human necessity. It is a tragedy of governance that shelter, one of the tripod needs of human survival, remains elusive in a country that prides itself on being Africa’s largest economy. As I reflect on the multiplicity of issues bound up in this perennial question, I am reminded of the Yoruba adage that says ile ni abo isimi oko, wherever we go, or whatever we do or embark upon, our final destination remains the home, the safe haven.
Any country that cannot solve its housing crisis is a country that is building on sand. A dispassionate interrogation of the Nigerian housing dilemma must first acknowledge the embarrassing discrepancy between demand and supply. Official statistics estimates a housing deficit to be over 28 million units according to bureau of statistics. The truth, however, is that beyond these figures lies a more disturbing reality: the demographic momentum of our youthful population ensures that churn-out rates of new households far outpace any conceivable construction effort under the current policy architecture.
Meanwhile, the rural–urban migration pressure continues to choke the cities, creating sprawling informal settlements that sprout faster than the authorities can map them. Lagos, Kano, Port Harcourt and Abuja are instructive indices of this unmanaged explosion, where the urban poor have been pushed into ever-shrinking parcels of dignity in the form of slums, makeshift structures, overcrowded tenements and environmentally hazardous shanties. Yet, even as the state looks away, the slum dweller writes his own history of survival, because nature abhors a vacuum, including the vacuum created by public policy failure.
The violence in the Northern and Eastern parts of the country has further exacerbated the crisis. Successive administrations have recited the mantra of “affordable housing,” but the phrase has lost meaning from overuse. The disconnect between policy and the lived reality of the citizen is perhaps most visible here. Houses built under several federal or state schemes routinely fall within pricing thresholds that make affordability a cruel joke. A civil servant earning N150,000 per month is asked to buy units priced between N10 million and N25 million, and we call it “mass affordable housing.”
Even the mortgage facilities that are supposed to cushion this disparity remain either inaccessible or unattractive due to high interest rates, bureaucratic complexities and the absence of long-term financing instruments.
The Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria (FMBN), despite its efforts, has been weighed down by structural constraints, leaving the National Housing Fund a mechanism that many contributors do not trust and from which they rarely benefit. It is no surprise, therefore, that out of frustration, people revert to incremental self-construction, a room today, a block tomorrow, a roof several years later, yet even this traditional coping mechanism is increasingly threatened by rising prices of cement, iron rods, land documentation fees and the impunity of local touts who extort “securing fees” from helpless landowners.
Even where some States intervened, apart from only being accessible to the salary earning persons, the window is too narrow to avoid compromise, exploitation and corruption. The informal sector proprietors are totally helpless. As we interrogate the housing question, attention must also be paid to the land administration system, arguably one of the most stifling components of the crisis. The Land Use Act, the national law that regulates land in the country, despite its lofty intentions, has become a major obstacle to orderly, affordable and accessible housing delivery.
The requirement of obtaining a governor’s consent before land transactions are perfected has created a bureaucracy that is slow, opaque, expensive and susceptible to abuse. In many states, obtaining a Certificate of Occupancy or perfecting land title is a nightmare that runs into years, with several unreceipted “facilitation fees” forming part of the unofficial toll gates. This disincentivizes investment, elongates construction timelines and frustrates both citizens and developers.
As someone who has been involved in land and planning matters for decades, I can testify that until Nigeria confronts the land administration conundrum with courage and statesmanship, all talk of solving the housing problem will remain rhetoric. No country develops housing stock at scale without a transparent, efficient and investor-friendly land governance regime. The access to land, either through the secondary market, government, or the so-called land-owning families remains a nightmare. The worst is the security of tenure and indefeasibility of registered title.
This remains equally a mirage. The situation is so bad that reliance on registered title in contemporary times is now a misplaced trust as mutilation, tampering and removal of documents by unscrupulous officials have now become the order of the day. Equally disturbing is the absence of coherence in our urban planning frameworks. Many Nigerian cities expand through reaction rather than through foresight. Physical planning laws are either outdated or poorly enforced. Developers build where they like, how they like and when they like, and it is only after floods, collapses or community protests that authorities wake up to issue contravention notices.
There is a reason why cities like Singapore, Dubai, Kigali and even Johannesburg do not wrestle with the extent of chaos that Nigerian cities endure, it is not that they are richer; it is that they take planning seriously. Our refusal to align land use, transportation, housing, infrastructure, environmental sustainability and social amenities into a single coherent framework explains why estates spring up without access roads, why houses are built on drainage channels, why people spend three hours commuting a distance of 10 kilometres, and why many of our urban centres resemble construction sites frozen in confusion.
When governance abdicates, chaos becomes the natural planner. One must also confront the socio-economic injustice embedded in the Nigerian housing structure. There is a deepening class divide in access to shelter. While the poor and lower-middle class grapple with survival-level housing, the upper class erects luxury estates, gated communities and high-rise condominiums that often remain unoccupied.
A casual drive through the upscale districts of Abuja or Lagos reveals numerous empty houses, monuments to speculative investment and asset dumping. A society that builds houses that people cannot live in while the masses sleep under bridges or in decrepit shacks is one that is courting future instability. Housing is not just a roof over one’s head; it is a stabilizing force, a psychological anchor and a mechanism for wealth creation. When that anchor is denied to millions, the social cohesion of the nation becomes fragile. There is a reason every serious government in the world invests in housing, it is cheaper to prevent social dislocation than to cure it.
The environmental dimension of the crisis cannot be disputed. Our housing patterns, especially in the low-income sphere, have produced slums that are environmental time bombs. Poor ventilation, inadequate sanitation, absence of water supply, indiscriminate waste disposal and susceptibility to flooding turn many communities into public health hazards. The rising incidence of cholera, malaria, fungal infections, contaminated water sources and respiratory problems is linked to housing deprivation.
This is why housing is not merely a social issue; it is a public health issue. Yet environmental considerations rarely appear in the design of our housing schemes. Energy efficiency, green building technologies, water harvesting systems, flood resilience and climate-smart layouts are treated as exotic concepts rather than essential features. The world has moved on to sustainable architecture; Nigeria is still debating how to enforce building codes. This is our sad story. It is also important to interrogate the institutional fragmentation that bedevils the sector.
Housing in Nigeria is scattered across too many ministries, departments, agencies and subnational actors with overlapping mandates. From the Federal Ministry of Housing, Federal Housing Authority, to state housing corporations, urban renewal agencies, mortgage institutions, local planning authorities and private developers, the ecosystem operates in silos. Without coordination, duplication and wastage flourish. The absence of a coherent national housing strategy, one that aligns federal intentions with state realities and private-sector capacity, creates a vacuum where each player does as he likes. No orchestra can produce harmonious music when every instrumentalist is playing from a different sheet. The private sector, despite its ambition, cannot solve the problem alone.
Developers are profit-driven, and rightly so. They build for those who can pay. But the Nigerian state has not played its role as an enabler. Infrastructure deficits such as roads, water, power, drainage continue to constitute some of the greatest barriers to affordable delivery. When developers must shoulder the burden of providing internal and external infrastructure, the cost is transferred to the buyer, thereby pushing units far beyond the affordability threshold.
Government must not only regulate; it must invest strategically. Land banking, infrastructure provision, incentives for technology-driven construction, tax rebates, modernized building materials and public–private development partnerships have proven effective in countries that have significantly reduced their housing deficit. Nigeria can learn from these models if only we muster the political will. As I reflect on all these dimensions, I am persuaded that the housing crisis is ultimately a crisis of governance mindset. Nations do not solve problems by wishing them away; they solve them by confronting uncomfortable truths and adopting a long-term horizon.
The tragedy of Nigeria is that we approach housing with the same short-termism that afflicts most of our policy processes. Housing requires not just investment, but vision; not just policy, but implementation; not just speeches, but sincerity. If we are serious, a new paradigm must emerge, one that reforms the Land Use Act, (which has been an endless thought to unlock land accessibility); strengthens mortgage financing and expands long-term credit; integrates urban planning with transportation, environment and economic realities; incentivizes private-sector construction; enforces building standards; modernizes building technologies; confronts slum proliferation with humane urban renewal; and develops a national housing masterplan that survives political change.
Without these, we shall continue dancing around the same fire without ever quenching it. In interrogating the housing question in Nigeria, one discovers that the issue is not a lack of knowledge, expertise or resources. It is the absence of will, discipline and strategic clarity. The housing deficit is a symptom; the real disease is governance inertia.
Until Nigeria summons the courage to treat the disease rather than manage the symptoms, millions of our citizens will continue to live in indignity while policymakers issue annual promises. A nation that cannot shelter its people is a nation that has failed at one of the simplest tests of civilization. The time to act is long overdue. And perhaps, only then can Nigeria begin to heal from the inside out.
