“…The luxury towers cater to Nigeria’s ultra rich, who Knight Frank estimates number about 40,000, for whom money is no object, and who own second homes in London, Dubai, New York or Miami.
Some analysts question who will live in all these new properties, especially given the many existing apartment complexes in the Lekki and Ikoyi neighbourhoods that are at just 30 or 40 per cent capacity.
The answer is that it may not really matter, given how useful real estate is as a laundry service for dirty money, said Timothy Nubi, a real estate management professor at the University of Lagos,
“There is one school of thought that it is a means of storing capital by people who have no opportunity of taking their money abroad, or putting their money in the bank — they just put their money in property . . . and hope that they can sell it years later,” said Nubi.
“It’s just crazy. You drive around Ikoyi and you will see the whole left side of a street [with buildings] that are vacant.”
