Nigeria’s housing crisis is deepening as rising construction costs, inflation, naira depreciation and expensive mortgages make home ownership increasingly difficult for millions of Nigerians.
It is learnt that Nigeria’s official housing deficit has reached 14.925 million units, while another 15.2 million existing homes are considered structurally inadequate or substandard.
This puts the country’s wider housing challenge at almost 28 million units.
However, the problem is no longer only the number of houses available. For many Nigerians, it is whether they can afford the houses being built.
The cost of cement, steel, roofing materials and other building materials has continued to rise, while high interest rates have made mortgage financing difficult for many prospective homeowners.
In major cities, particularly Lagos, rising rents are also forcing low- and middle-income earners to move farther away from their workplaces, resulting in longer journeys and higher transportation costs.
Housing experts said rapid population growth, urbanisation, high land costs, inflation, weak purchasing power and limited access to long-term finance are widening the affordability gap.
The Lagos State Government has also acknowledged the pressure, with Commissioner for Housing, Moruf Akinderu-Fatai, saying the shortage is most severe among low- and middle-income earners.
The Federal Government has introduced programmes such as the Renewed Hope Housing Programme and the Ministry of Finance Incorporated Real Estate Investment Fund (MREIF) to increase housing supply and improve access to housing finance.
MREIF offers mortgages of up to 20 years at a fixed interest rate of 9.75 per cent, alongside rent-to-own and outright purchase options.
However, experts say government programmes alone may not be enough to close the huge housing gap.
A lecturer of Urban and Regional Planning at Adeleke University, Dr Kunle Adegoke, called for stronger private-sector participation through public-private partnerships and incentives for developers.
He said Nigeria needed to move beyond individual housing projects to mass housing schemes capable of delivering homes on a much larger scale.
Adegoke also called for deeper development of the mortgage market and greater use of rent-to-own schemes, noting that many workers and self-employed Nigerians cannot meet the requirements of conventional mortgages.
Stakeholders have also identified access to land, delays in obtaining property titles, inadequate infrastructure and limited long-term funding as major obstacles to housing development.
They called for faster land reforms and improved land administration, as well as government investment in roads, drainage, water and electricity around housing development areas.
In Lagos, the state government said it had delivered 10,623 housing units through direct funding and public-private partnerships over the past seven years, with plans to increase the figure to more than 14,000 units before the end of 2026.
It has also supported more than 20,000 residents through mortgage and rent-to-own programmes over the past 12 years.
Housing stakeholders, however, said the figures remain small compared with the scale of the national housing challenge.
They called for stronger cooperation among federal and state governments, private developers, mortgage institutions, pension funds and other long-term investors to increase housing supply.
For millions of Nigerians, the housing crisis is now reflected in rising rents, longer journeys to work and the growing difficulty of owning a home.
Experts warn that without a major increase in housing construction, rapid population growth, urbanisation and rising building costs could push decent housing even further beyond the reach of ordinary Nigerians.