Property prices in Lagos and Abuja have risen tremendously in recent years. This has led to widespread outcry by working people in these cities and professional middle-class netizens online, over the high cost of housing and arbitrary rent increases by landlords, which continue to get worse year after year.
The rising cost of housing is a nationwide issue, especially in urban areas and not just in Lagos and Abuja alone. This phenomenon is partly the result of accelerated inflationary pressures since the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as recent policies of the Tinubu administration, such as the removal of fuel subsidies and the devaluation of the naira. These factors have caused landlords to raise rents in an attempt to maximise returns. However, Lagos and Abuja are the worst affected due to extreme under-supply of housing and relatively high investment interest in their real estate markets.
These cities also have some of the highest concentrations of relatively well-paying (white-collar) jobs and high income-generating opportunities in the country, leading to high rates of urbanisation and increasing demand for housing. Developers often gain land at astronomical prices, build using increasingly expensive materials, and list the resulting properties at inflated prices. The entire industry is geared towards high return on investment and quick profit making by the investors.
Tenants are frequently subjected to annual rent hikes with little to no protection or intervention from the government. For new tenants , the situation is even worse. In addition to high rents, they are burdened by numerous additional charges from landlords, agents, and property management firms, including commissions, caution fees, and other arbitrary costs. Some landlords even demand two years rent in advance. This is an illegal practice that remains widespread.
Underinvestment
The government has invested nowhere near enough in urban planning and housing development. Federal and state governments alike have effectively abandoned the sector to private interests. Yet, the private sector alone cannot mobilise the capital to deliver mass, low-cost housing at the scale required. It is also incapable of addressing the production inefficiencies brought about by inflationary pressures on inputs like cement, steel, and other materials. Imported components are even more expensive due to the devaluation of the naira and poor logistics infrastructure.
Furthermore, the government has failed to establish a robust regulatory framework for housing and real estate development. The Nigerian neocolonial economic model entails extraction of the social wealth by a handful of with minimal productive expansion. The result is the situation we see in Lagos and Abuja, where property prices are exorbitant, given income levels and even in direct nominal terms, compared to some international cities in advanced capitalist countries that offer better quality housing, infrastructure, stable electricity and even higher income opportunities.
The global crisis of profitability and the economic shocks caused by the intensified neoliberal policies of the Tinubu administration have pushed capital into the real estate sector, which is viewed as a “safe haven” accelerating commodification of housing. Meanwhile, the landlord class and real estate investors continue to demand ever-higher returns.
This situation forces an ever-increasing percentage of the workers’ income to go toward rent and food, causing a decline in living standards and deepening poverty levels.
Housing is a human right
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) stipulates that the right to adequate housing is a fundamental human right which every human being should enjoy. Nigeria has signed and ratified various international treaties, such as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), which affirm this right. The Nigerian Constitution also recognises this imperative in Section 16(2)(d), which states that the state shall direct its policy toward ensuring adequate shelter. However, this provision is rendered non-justiciable (not enforceable by courts) by Section 6(6)(c).
The Nigerian state has failed or outrightly refused to enshrine these rights into enforceable law.
Housing is a human right. It should exist for living, and not for speculative investment, in an humane system. But capitalism is anything but humane. It is all about profit and expansion of capital. A large-scale social housing and infrastructure development program would not only provide shelter but also create employment, raise living standards, and facilitate better access to healthcare and social services through planned urbanisation. This would increase the purchasing power of the people.
However, the Nigerian ruling class has been unable to secure the necessary capital for such a project. Due to the very nature of Nigeria’s neocolonial capitalist system, the ruling elite lacks the discipline to generate internal capital or to secure enough international financing which demands reliable returns. They are also incapable of organising the type of national mobilisation required for such an undertaking.
Even the limited pace of current urban expansion and infrastructure development is contributing to the alarming rate of deforestation in Nigeria, as the government fails to allocate adequate resources to address environmental degradation. This has had numerous spillover effects, including wood scarcity leading to inflated prices, endangering species of animals and their habitat, as well as even spurring inter-tribal clashes as a result of dwindling environmental resources.
So far in this article, we have focused on tenants/renters and homebuyers in Lagos and Abuja, people who are relatively well off compared to the large population of people living in shacks, or homeless people, including children, who live exposed to the elements across the country. This makes the need for mass housing development and provision even more urgent.
What is needed is for workers to cast off the profit-driven yoke of the ruling investor classes and landlords through socialist revolutionary action. The working people would implement housing reforms that benefit the poor, when they defeat the rich few, overturn their exploitative system of capitalism and start building socialism as the better society which it will be. Only the working class can commit the necessary resources through massive mobilisation which equally factors in ecological considerations to guarantee not just adequate housing and urbanisation, but also infrastructure centered around communal reproductive care.
Resources would be allocated to ensure both social and biological reproductive care, as well as environmental sustainability, so that we may live in harmony with our environment.
by Emmanuel EDOMWINYI
