A legal practitioner and estate surveyor, Olusola Enitan, has said Nigeria’s housing market is structured in a way that effectively prevents the majority of citizens from owning homes.
Speaking on TVC’s Breakfast on Friday, Enitan pointed to what he described as a wide gap between rising house prices in major cities such as Lagos and Abuja and the income level of most Nigerians.
He noted that young graduates are increasingly confronted with rent demands as high as ₦9 million for two-bedroom apartments in areas like Lekki, stressing that the crisis goes beyond landlords’ actions and reflects a deeper problem he termed “demand prohibition.”
“There is no way a student can get a house; it’s not one of those that the housing plan has covered. Demand prohibition goes to tell you how you can access money to actually make your dream come true… Finance is really the bane of housing. If there’s no money, don’t even go there,” he said.
Enitan explained that the mortgage system has made the formal housing market largely inaccessible to average Nigerians, noting that even the cheapest homes now cost around ₦15 million.
According to him, processing a mortgage for such property could require monthly payments of about ₦1 million in interest alone, meaning prospective homeowners would need to earn between ₦3 million and ₦4 million monthly to qualify.
“How many Nigerians do that? Less than 1% of Nigerians earn that much every month,” he said.
He argued that the implication is that nearly all Nigerians are excluded from housing plans, describing it as a fundamental flaw in the system.
“That means 99% of Nigerians are not in the housing plan, and that is just the fundamental,” Enitan added.
The estate surveyor also criticised government housing interventions, saying planned housing supply falls far below demand, especially with rapid population growth in major urban centres.
He said Lagos is growing at 3.7 per cent annually while Abuja records 4.4 per cent growth, yet housing development plans remain insufficient.
“With a housing start plan of about 15,000 for Lagos State, there is no way to bridge the gap. With a growth rate and a monthly deficit of about 400,000 housing units, while you are planning for 15,000? No, we are not doing the right things,” he said.
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