Legal practitioner and estate surveyor, Olusola Enitan, has said that the vast majority of Nigerians have been effectively “prohibited” from homeownership by a dysfunctional economic framework.
Speaking on TVC’s Breakfast on Friday, Enitan highlighted a staggering disconnect between the soaring cost of housing in commercial hubs like Lagos and Abuja and the actual earning capacity of the Nigerian workforce.
Addressing the plight of young graduates facing rent prices as high as ₦9 million for two-bedroom apartments in areas like Lekki, Enitan argued that the crisis is not merely about greedy landlords, but a fundamental issue of “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”, Enitan said.
Enitan broke down the math of the current mortgage system, illustrating why the formal housing market is a “no-go area” for the average citizen.
He noted that even the most “affordable” houses on the market now start at approximately N15 million.
“By the time you process the mortgage, you have to be paying about 1 million every month just on interest. If you are paying 1 million on interest… you must earn between 3 million and 4 million naira. How many Nigerians do that? Less than 1% of Nigerians earn that much every month,” he said.
Enitan concluded with a stinging indictment of the current status quo, “That means 99% of Nigerians are not in the housing plan, and that is just the fundamental.”
The valuer, in his assessment of the nation’s real estate sector,
further criticised the scale of government intervention, comparing the current housing “start plans” against the explosive population growth in Nigeria’s major cities. With Lagos growing at 3.7% and Abuja at 4.4 per cent annually, the supply is nowhere near meeting the demand.
“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 added.
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