Lagos, one of Nigeria’s largest cities is facing deep housing challenges, in some parts of the state, residents with the willpower have moved to top-priced places to establish their properties eating deep into areas such as the Atlantic Ocean and other areas.
This inspired BBC’s Nancy Kacungira to carryout investigations to unravel the living situations and reveal that, ‘Affordable housing is a considerable challenge for urban areas with large populations, and this is particularly prevalent in the Nigeria’s city of Lagos. More than 500,000 people move to the city every year and across Nigeria, there is already a housing deficit of more than 17 million units’.
She revealed further that, there are on-going projects of varying scale trying to address the shortage; one is reclaiming land from the Atlantic Ocean to build a new city suburb called Eko Atlantic on the shores of Victoria Island. Tonnes of sand and heavy rock were poured into the ocean to provide 10 sq km (3.8 sq miles) of land for shops, offices and homes. Protected by an 8km long sea wall, the city will have its own supplies of power, water and even an independent road network.
In the view of developers, Eko Atlantic is targeted at middle income earners and has an accommodation capacity of more than 500,000 people. Although, the multibillion dollar project has been perceived as being “only for the rich” judging by its landscape. According to some of the developers including, Ronald Chagoury Jr who said. ‘it is a perception they have been trying to shake off. From the beginning we always thought that this would be a city for the middle income. We know that the middle income has grown significantly in the past 15 years and we know that it is going to grow even more.”
From the opinion of Ronald Chagoury Jr, it can be therefore said that the Eko Atlantic site is only for those who can afford.
Staying with Nana
With the increasing housing challenges in Lagos, many of its residents are of the felling that, they cannot just afford the prices of houses in the city. To them, the prices of properties are too high and the annual payments of rents requiresd by landlords against the monthly payments are big challenges.
A consultant in the Banking sector, Abimbola Agbalu shared his challenge stating that, ‘he has to live at his grandmother’s house because renting his own place would be too expensive’. Some housing projects remain unoccupied because they are pricey. “If I wanted to rent a house where I would prefer in Lagos I would be spending at least 80% of my pay cheque to move in because I would have to pay two years’ rent upfront, agency fees and maintenance fees. “And from then on, I would have to spend another 60-70% of my pay cheque every year on rent, which doesn’t make sense.
“The problem is not that there are no houses. If you look around, there are empty houses all over Lagos; some can even go a year without being rented out. “The problem is that people can’t afford them. We need better alternatives.”
Revamping shipping containers
With the demand for affordable houses relatively very high, some concerned organizations are beginning to create ways of solving the rioting situation by ushering in economical housing. One of such ways is by making homes out of cargo containers. Dele Ijaiya-Oladipo says he co-founded Tempohousing Nigeria to provide a creative solution in a city that desperately needs low-cost housing.
According to him, shipping containers are modified to make houses but Nigerians are not keen on them. He said “The only way we can get the housing deficit sorted is by providing good quality houses at affordable rates. “You can’t build a million homes at a price that no-one will ever afford – that doesn’t achieve anything.” Mr Ijaiya-Oladipo’s container homes are 25% cheaper than traditional housing, and can be built in as little as two weeks. “But the concept is still foreign to many Nigerians; so most of his clients tend to use the containers to build office spaces, not homes,” he says. “Until a potential client actually sees our past work, they can’t really picture how a shipping container can be used as a finished house or office. “We have to encourage people to visit our office which is made out of containers, so they can see what we are talking about.”
From a self-sustaining city to refurbished-shipping containers, private sector real-estate developers are offering both big and small solutions – and Lagos needs them all. The city is Africa’s largest, and its population is expected to double by 2050; putting even more pressure on already limited housing options.
Nigerian housing situation needs better and simpler alternatives to ameliorate the engulfing housing conditions, until then, most buildings may remain unoccupied for even longer periods due to people’s financial situations.
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