By Tayo Oke

Landlords are people with houses they let to others for either a monthly or yearly rent. Some only do commercial letting to businesses, but the vast majority of letting is done from one private individual to another. Property ownership, or real estate, is one of the safest investments one can acquire. The value of houses tends to appreciate more than they depreciate, so there is a clear incentive for people with spare cash to think of putting it on properties. This is all the more so since there is never a shortage of people in search of accommodation. Demand for accommodation far outstrips the housing stock on offer at any one period. In view of this, landlords throughout the world have a common trait; grubby, single-minded, no empathy, and little compassion. This is a stereotype, of course, but the everyday experience for a lot of low-income people bears it out regardless. To buttress this point, let me make reference to an incident that happened in the Federal Capital Territory recently. A tenant went on a prolonged business trip and came back to find that the roof on his rented house had leaked, letting in drops of rain. Consequently, he met his precious belongings soaked in a pool of water, including his latest (swanky) laptop. He immediately called the landlord, who promised to send someone to come and mend the roof. Not a word of sympathy for damage to the tenant’s personal effects, maybe, due to the fact that his long absence from the house had resulted in him falling behind on his rent by several months.

So, it happened that the landlord was already in a foul, belligerent mood due to the accumulated rent arrears. In a low-cost housing unit, the damage to the tenant’s belongings, including electronic equipment, ran into a couple of millions. Following a cost-benefit analysis, the hapless tenant made an informed decision to move out of the property to a different, more upmarket location, whereupon the irate landlord ordered rent recovery agents – a bunch of muscle men – to harass and molest the tenant for the outstanding rent on the day of the move. The landlord only backed off upon receiving a phone call and a stern letter from the tenant’s solicitors. The rent, of course, was a pittance compared to the tenant’s belongings which now lie in ruins. Before rushing to judgement on the overdue rent, the tenant had no prior history of falling behind and had in fact done much to improve the dwelling at considerable personal cost to himself. Well, yes, this is only one incidence of a rogue landlord you might say but millions of tenants up and down the country could relate to the attitudinal factor, bordering on callousness on the part of the landlord in this particular scenario. To say that many of the landlords are irritant pests, would be unfair to pests.

Granted that there are pockets of bad tenants here and there, who often abuse the generosity of their landlords, but the preponderance of intolerance in tenancy matters, in this country, is with the unscrupulous landlord. The question is what gives them the audacity to place themselves above the law and above all human decency as they are wont to do? The answer is in the disequilibrium in the demand and supply pendulum. There are more tenants than there are homes for rent. This is borne out by the grim fact that approximately 24.4 million (13%) of Nigerians are homeless, according to figures compiled by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, 2020. The world body’s numbers ought to be taken with a pinch of salt though. ‘Homelessness’ is a notoriously difficult concept to grapple with. What one person regards as ‘home’ is no more than a ‘shed’ to another. There is also the ‘hidden homeless’ in reference to people living in crowded accommodation or simply squatting in someone else’s back garden. So, the homeless figures are bound to be considerably higher than those given by the UN.

It should also be noted that the scarcity of rented accommodation is compounded by the low level of homeownership in the country, estimated to be around 62% as of 2019, according to a report by the National Bureau of Statistics in collaboration with the World Bank. What came across as rather intriguing in the study was the breakdown of homeownership in Nigeria by region, which they find to be: North-Central (69.4%), North-East (78.7%), North-West (88.1%), South-East (63.2%), South-South (46.2%), and South-West (25.5%). These rather interesting figures would have us believe that the combined regions of the North, acknowledged to be the poorest, have more homeownership in it than the other parts of the country. By way of analogy, therefore, what do we make of the same World Bank figures that find more than 80% of Nigeria’s poorest citizens residing in the North? Much reliance is placed on World Bank figures in these matters, sometimes justifiably, but these particular data on homeownership sounds rather counterintuitive. Who would have thought that Northern Nigeria has a larger percentage of homeownership, even greater than in the most affluent regions of the South-West and the oil and mineral-rich, South-South? Was it not Mark Twain and others, who once said, “lies, damned lies, and statistics?” Or, could there be a grain of truth in the figures after all?

First, the high homeownership figures in the North vis-à-vis the South could actually be a pointer to the possibility that the overall population of the North vis-à-vis the South is much lower than is generally believed. In reality, population density in Nigeria is actually in the affluent South, especially Lagos, and the South-West in general. It follows, logically, that the more densely populated an area is, the more pressure there will be on housing. Second point is culture. The idea of homeownership, especially in the South-West, has been greatly influenced by Western consumer individualism, much more than it has been in the North. There is less clearance on ‘ownership’ of a dwelling in the North as whole communities routinely lay claim to the same common home. ‘Ownership’ in the South-West has become a lot more restrictive than perhaps any other region in the federation, where single homeownership or a nuclear family setup is more in vogue. The more people who are counted out of the nest, the less there is in the overall tally of homeowners. It should be no surprise, therefore, that unscrupulous landlords would thrive more in urban areas with dense populations than in the other sparsely populated areas. It is not that there are no laws to curb the excesses of such landlords, it is simply that the market is overwhelmed by demand for housing.

Given a choice between asserting one’s rights and keeping a roof over one’s head, most tenants would opt for the latter. In many instances in the FCT, Port Harcourt, Kano and Lagos, the rooms in a dwelling are routinely let out in full the moment the foundation for construction of the building has been laid. Consequently, the housing/rent market is one area that will remain vulnerable to unscrupulous elements. Government can counter this by building more affordable housing even more rapidly than hitherto planned. Meanwhile, it is high time citizens became tenant vigilantes. Let us compile the names of the unscrupulous elements giving the good ones a bad name. Let us do that locally, then name and shame them publicly. That will teach them.

drtayooke@gmail.com

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