Feature/OPED
Nature has been Sending us Signals. Our Farmers Read Them First
By Mannir U. Ringim (PhD)
Long before the satellite forecasts and the seasonal advisories, the African farmer learned to read the sky. He watched the colour of the clouds, the behaviour of the birds, the first scent of rain on hot ground, and he planted accordingly. For generations, that knowledge was reliable enough to feed nations. Today, it is faltering not because the farmer has forgotten how to read the signs, but because the signs themselves have changed. The rains that once came in April now arrive in May, or not at all. The harmattan lingers. The river that once flooded every decade now floods twice in five years. Nature is still sending its signals; they have become harder and crueller to read.
Today, the world marks World Environment Day. This year’s theme, “Inspired by Nature. For Climate. For Our Future,” will be examined in Baku and echoed in boardrooms and headlines across the world. It is a worthy conversation, but the people who live that theme most literally will not be in any of those rooms. They are the smallholder farmers of northern Nigeria and the wider Sahel, the rice growers of the Niger basin, the cassava, cocoa, and oil palm households from Cross River to the forests of the coast. It is a Nigerian story, but not only a Nigerian one: the same signals are being read across West Africa, and in the last decade, the reading has grown harder.
I want to make a single argument on this day of World Environment Day, and although it begins in the field, it ends in the boardroom: in our part of the world, agricultural finance is climate finance. The most direct, most local and most consequential form of climate action available to the region’s financial sector is not a distant carbon market or an offset scheme negotiated abroad. It is the decision to put serious, patient and intelligent capital into the hands of the people working the most climate-exposed asset we possess — our land. Get that decision right, and we address food security, rural livelihoods and climate resilience in a single motion. Get it wrong, and we will keep treating three faces of one crisis as though they were unrelated problems.
The signals from the land
To understand why this matters, it helps to travel the land as those of us in business banking do. Across the Sahel, the desert is not a metaphor; it advances year upon year over farmland that fed families in living memory. Lake Chad — once one of Africa’s great freshwater bodies, shared by Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon — has retreated to a fraction of its former size, carrying fishing and farming livelihoods with it. In the middle belts, the rains have turned violent and unpredictable, and a single night of flooding can erase a season’s labour and a year’s income. Along the coast and the eroding river valleys, gully after gully swallows farms, homes and roads. These are not isolated misfortunes; they are the local expressions of a global phenomenon, and the people absorbing them first are the people who feed everyone else.
This is the part of the climate story we too often misfile. We log the late rains under “agriculture,” the flood under “disaster relief,” the rising cost of a meal under “the economy,” and we reserve the word “environment” for tree-planting campaigns. But these are not separate ledgers. The farmer who cannot plant because the rains failed, the trader who charges more because the harvest shrank, the young person who leaves the village because the farm no longer pays — all are responding to the same signal. In our region, climate change announces itself first as an agricultural event. We will not manage it as an environmental one until we are willing to finance it as an economic one.
A paradox of capital
Here lies a contradiction we have tolerated for far too long. Agriculture employs more people than any other sector in Nigeria and across much of West Africa, and contributes a substantial share of national output. By any honest measure, it is the foundation of the real economy, and yet, for decades, it has drawn only a single-digit share of total bank lending, which is a fraction of its weight in jobs, in food, and in stability. We have built financial systems that are, in effect, under-invested in the very sector that sustains them.
The reasons are familiar to every banker. Agriculture has long been judged too risky, too seasonal, too informal and too hard to collateralise. A farmer’s income arrives once or twice a year, not monthly; his balance sheet consists of a few hectares, some livestock, and a great deal of practical knowledge. No conventional credit model was built to value it. So, capital did the rational short-term thing: it stayed away, or lent briefly and expensively, on terms that suited the lender’s calendar rather than the crop’s. That caution made sense in a stable climate. In a changing one, it is self-defeating because the farmer who cannot borrow cannot adapt. He cannot buy the drought-tolerant seed, install the modest irrigation that frees him from relying on a single rainy season, or afford the storage that keeps a good harvest from spoiling before the market. We have been asking our most climate-exposed citizens to face the hardest conditions in memory with the least capital available to them. That is not prudence; it is a slow failure of both economics and adaptation, and the bill arrives at every table as more expensive food.
Risk is also a design problem
If there is good news here, it is that much of what we call “agricultural risk” is not a law of nature. It is a design problem, and design problems can be solved. The past few years have produced a genuinely more sophisticated toolkit, and the institutions willing to use it are finding the sector far more bankable than the old assumptions allowed. It begins with lending that fits the farmer rather than forcing the farmer to fit the facility: cash-flow facilities structured around the crop cycle, disbursing at planting and falling due after harvest. Value-chain and anchor-borrower models, in which a credible off-taker sits between the bank and thousands of smallholders, solve the scale, collateral, and market access problems at a single stroke. Warehouse-receipt systems let stored grain serve as collateral, so a farmer need not sell everything at harvest, when prices are lowest, merely to raise cash.
Around that core sits an expanding set of instruments: input and mechanisation finance to lift yields; irrigation finance to break the dependence on the rains; cold-chain and storage finance to attack the staggering share of what we grow that is still lost after harvest, losses that are, in their own quiet way, as much an environmental cost as an economic one, since every wasted tonne is water, land, fuel and labour spent for nothing. Weather-index insurance can pay out automatically when rainfall falls below a threshold, turning an uninsurable risk into a priced one, and the spread of mobile technology and farm-level data — satellite imagery, mapping, digital payment histories — is finally giving lenders an evidence-based way to assess the smallholder they once treated as invisible. None of this is theoretical; each instrument is already in use somewhere in the region today. The task is not to invent new tools but to deploy the existing ones at scale, and with discipline.
Here, agricultural finance and the climate agenda converge, because the instruments that make farming bankable are, almost without exception, the ones that make it resilient. Irrigation is an adaptation. Drought-tolerant seed is an adaptation. Healthier soils, smarter water use, agroforestry that holds back the desert, storage that wastes less — these are not optional “green” extras; they are the difference between a farm that survives a harsher climate and one that does not. The point lands with particular force in West Africa, among the most climate-vulnerable yet least climate-financed regions on earth. The global conversation has turned decisively to climate finance — Azerbaijan, this year’s World Environment Day host, carried that agenda as president of COP29 — but climate finance is not only something that happens at altitude. Its most grounded form, for us, is the facility that enables a cooperative to drill a borehole or build a warehouse. The local reality is how the global ambition gets delivered.
Shared risk, shared frontier
None of this can rest on the banks alone, and it should not. The risks are real, and the most durable way to manage them is to share them among the actors who each hold a piece of the solution. Governments set the frameworks, build rural infrastructure, and provide the guarantees that make long-tenor lending viable. Development finance institutions, the African Development Bank chief among them, with their long-standing ambition to feed the continent, bring the patient, blended capital that crowds in commercial lenders rather than out. Insurers price the weather risk that banks should not carry alone. Agritech firms and aggregators supply data and market linkages. Banks bring structure, reach, governance and capital. Nigeria has tried versions of this before — the Agricultural Credit Guarantee Scheme and the Anchor Borrowers’ Programme among them, and the experience taught us both the promise of public-private agricultural finance and the discipline it demands: such partnerships work only when they are designed with rigour, governed transparently, and judged by outcomes rather than by money disbursed.
For those of us whose responsibilities include the public sector, the most valuable role a bank can play is often not as lender of last resort but as honest broker, aligning the ambitions of government, the capital of development partners, and the needs of the farmer into structures that actually move money to the field, and the prize is larger than risk management. It is tempting, faced with advancing desert and shrinking water, to speak of the Sahel and the rural North only in the language of crisis. However, that language is incomplete and self-fulfilling. The same regions hold vast arable land, established value chains in grains, livestock and horticulture, and one of the youngest workforces on earth. When a young person can finance an irrigated dry-season crop, or a women’s cooperative can secure inputs and a guaranteed buyer, agriculture stops being a fallback and becomes a future. That shift — from relief to investment, from managing decline to financing growth — is the single most powerful contribution finance can make to the regions on the climate front line. It is also good business: the young and the underserved are not a market to be pitied, but the largest growth opportunity in African banking.
Where we choose to stand
At Union Bank, this is not a new conviction. An institution that has banked Nigerian communities for more than a century has watched the relationship between people and land change in real time and has come to regard agricultural finance not as a niche or an act of charity, but as national infrastructure — and, increasingly, as climate infrastructure. The question we put to ourselves is not whether agriculture is worth financing, but how to finance it in a way that builds resilience rather than extends credit, and how to do so at the scale the moment now demands.
The campaign behind this year’s World Environment Day speaks of the signals the Earth is sending us, and the signals we choose to send back. It is an apt frame for a banker. For too long, the signal our financial system sent the farmer was a quiet, discouraging one: you are too risky, too small, too far away to be worth our capital. The farmer heard it clearly, and many of his children left the land. We can now send a different signal.
“For Climate” and “For Our Future” are not phrases to be admired from a distance. For Nigeria and its neighbours, there are decisions to be made at home in how we price risk, where we direct capital, and whether we are finally willing to stand behind the people who have been reading nature’s signals all along. The most meaningful climate commitment our financial sector can make this World Environment Day is not a statement; it is a willingness to finance the land that feeds us, intelligently and at scale. The moment, as the campaign rightly insists, is now. Now for climate — and, just as urgently, now for the farmer.
Mannir U. Ringim is Executive Director, Business Banking at Union Bank of Nigeria, with responsibility for the Public Sector and the Bank’s Northern, South-South and South-East businesses.
He is versatile in spearheading new business development, cultivating partnerships,
and fostering healthy stakeholder relationships, with a focus on driving business growth and achieving revenue milestones.
Mannir’s educational qualifications include a PhD in Economics (focus on Financial Inclusion) from Bayero University, Kano, and Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees in Economics from the same institution. He also holds executive certifications from INSEAD Business School in Singapore, Kellogg School of Management in Chicago, and Euromoney in London, reflecting his dedication to continuous growth and excellence. Mannir has been an Honorary Senior Member of the Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria (HCIB) since 2015.
Feature/OPED
How Governor Uba Sani’s Sustain Agenda is Rewriting Kaduna’s Agricultural Metamorphosis
By Sani Abdulrazak, PhD
Governance ascends into telos when the hands that feed the nation work with sustained hope rather than uncertainty. The farmer is indeed relieved when he no longer gauges the farming season through the prism of survival or rising cost of fertiliser, but by the promise of a better harvest and a pathway to prosperity. Truth is, rural communities are only fundamentally satisfied when their fertile lands marry deliberate government intervention. This government intervention in agriculture is not in mere promises, speeches, or ceremonies, but in flourishing fields, fuller warehouses and improved livelihoods. At the very core of Governor Uba Sani’s SUSTAIN agenda is strengthening the bedrock upon which food security and economic prosperity are built: agriculture. His approach has been less of bombast and more of stewardship, allowing the sector to emerge from years of uncertainty into one of resurgence.
The agricultural sector of Kaduna State over the past three years reveals a government that has chosen investment over rhetoric. Pinpointing agriculture as the oxygen of the state’s economy, the administration has committed unprecedented resources to this very pertinent sector. The agricultural budget rose from barely ₦1.48 billion in 2023 to ₦74.2 billion in 2025, before exceeding ₦100 billion in the 2026 budget, making Kaduna one of the few states committing over 10 per cent of its annual expenditure to agriculture. These allocations represent an explicit declaration that meaningful agricultural transformation begins with deliberate investment. They equally reflect the prudence and resolve to position Kaduna not merely as a producer of crops but as an agricultural colossus. What once appeared a distant aspiration is gradually taking the shape of a tangible renaissance, built not on ephemeral promises but on carefully hewn policies and enduring commitments.
The most conspicuous manifestation of this administration’s intervention has been its direct support for farmers. Admittedly, farming has become increasingly expensive across the country lately, yet Kaduna state responded with one of the largest agricultural support programmes by distributing 15,000 metric tonnes of fertiliser, equivalent to about 500 truckloads, free of charge to over 120,000 farmers across the 23 local government areas. Through the “Tallafin Noma programme”, an additional 69,000 smallholder farmers received improved maize seeds and agrochemicals to increase productivity. These interventions have reduced production costs for thousands of farming households while strengthening food production at a time when food security remains a national concern. Such interventions are not mere statistics; they are a bulwark against rural poverty, a catalyst for productivity and a harbinger of renewed confidence. For many farmers, government support has become the linchpin upon which an abundant harvest now rests.
Governor Uba Sani understands that the true promise of modern agriculture lies not only in cultivation but also in the value created after the harvest. The commencement of the Kaduna Special Agro-Industrial Processing Zone marks an important shift from exporting raw produce to processing agricultural commodities within the state. Complementing this is the construction of Northern Nigeria’s first Agricultural Quality Assurance Centre, designed to certify agricultural produce for local and international markets. Together, these initiatives promise to reduce post-harvest losses, attract private investment, create employment opportunities and improve the competitiveness of Kaduna’s agricultural products beyond Nigeria’s borders. They equally represent a conscious effort to build an agricultural ecosystem, a lasting edifice of productivity whose impact will reverberate far beyond the present generation. The vision is transformative as it is audacious, replacing dependence with self-sufficiency and creating a confluence where farming, industry and commerce intersect.
Mechanisation and rural agricultural support have also received renewed focus. The procurement of tractors and farm implements, the provision of irrigation pumps, power tillers, fertilisers, and crop protection chemicals to farmer cooperatives, alongside continued investment in rural and farm-to-market roads, shows an understanding that productivity improves when farmers are supported with the right tools and infrastructure. Easier access to markets not only reduces transportation costs but also minimises post-harvest losses, ensuring that farmers reap greater value from their labour. These investments have become the fulcrum upon which rural prosperity increasingly turns, replacing archaic practices with innovative solutions and galvanising communities to embrace modern agriculture. They stand as an obelisk of thoughtful governance, a testament to the belief that development flourishes where opportunity is deliberately cultivated.
Superlatives are in short supply when describing Governor Uba Sani’s three years in office, and even more so when one attempts to capture the magnitude of his agricultural revolution. Among the promises he made was to revive agriculture as the engine of Kaduna’s economy, and, as always, he has kept his promise. We’ve always known he would; the challenges, though, are far from over, but every meaningful reform must navigate its own labyrinth of challenges. Yet the administration’s trajectory remains steadfast, its achievements too palpable to dismiss even to the staunch critics. It would be germane to etch in our minds that history, that impartial arbiter of leadership, may ultimately remember this administration as one that rekindled the state’s agricultural zenith and restored dignity to farming for generations to come.
Sani Abdulrazak, PhD, is a writer, researcher and public affairs analyst based in Zaria, Kaduna State
Feature/OPED
The Role of the Stock Market in Nation Building: Imperatives for an Inclusive Capital Economy
By Adedapo Adesanya
Nigeria’s stock market has crossed a milestone that demands attention. With total market capitalisation reaching N151.327 trillion as at June 2026, the Nigerian Exchange Limited (NGX) has not only consolidated its position as Africa’s second-largest bourse, but it has also demonstrated something more consequential: that domestic capital, when properly mobilised, is a credible engine of national development.
Nation building is rarely a singular act. It accumulates through institutions that function, capital that circulates, and citizens who believe the system works for them. Few institutions make that case as visibly as a thriving stock exchange. The market is no longer just a barometer of investor sentiment. It is an active participant in Nigeria’s development.
The quality of any capital market ultimately reflects the quality of the companies it hosts. Markets create national wealth most effectively when they provide long-term capital to productive enterprises that expand industrial capacity, create jobs, deepen local supply chains and generate enduring shareholder value.
Earlier in the year, President Bola Tinubu had commended the NGX Group, corporate Nigeria, market operators and investors for propelling NGX past the historic N100trn market capitalisation mark, describing the milestone as a strong indicator of renewed investor confidence and economic recovery.
He said: “The Nigerian capital market stands at the heart of our ambition to build a one-trillion-dollar economy. It is the engine through which long-term finance must be mobilised to power critical sectors – from infrastructure to housing, technology, energy and industrial growth.”
Nigeria has increasingly demonstrated this through home-grown corporate champions such as the Dangote Group, whose decades-long investments across strategic sectors illustrate how patient enterprise-building and capital market development can reinforce one another. Strong companies strengthen strong markets, and strong markets, in turn, provide the capital needed to build even stronger companies.
But numbers, however impressive, are only part of the story. The more compelling narrative lies in who is now participating and how. The explosion in retail participation over the past two years is inseparable from digital infrastructure.
Data by the Central Securities Clearing System (CSCS) shows 151,749 new brokerage accounts were opened in just the first five months of 2025. Between 2019 and November 2025, over 2.1 million new retail investment accounts were established, the strongest growth in seven years. This is not incidental. It is the direct result of deliberate technological positioning by market operators and regulators, and one of the more underappreciated contributions to national economic inclusion, the companies on the stock market.
Nigeria’s investing demographic is shifting, and the market must shift with it. A largely young, mobile-first population does not respond to traditional channels. They discover financial products on social media, transact via apps, and make decisions based on peer influence as much as professional advice. The 56 per cent year-on-year increase in retail equity investment to N981 billion in the first seven months of 2025 reflects this generational pivot.
Yet gaps remain. Women, smallholder entrepreneurs and low-income earners across tier-2 and tier-3 cities are underrepresented. Instruments like the Federal Government Savings Bond, accessible from as little as N5,000, demonstrate that appetite exists beyond the traditional investor class. The challenge now is sustained financial literacy, culturally relevant messaging, and last-mile digital infrastructure that meets these segments where they are. Broadening that base is not just good market development; it is nation-building in its most practical form.
Sustaining confidence in the capital market requires a functioning compact between four critical actors. Regulators must maintain the credibility they have worked on to rebuild. Reforms, including foreign exchange unification, banking recapitalisation, and NGX demutualisation, have restored institutional trust. That momentum cannot be squandered.
Financial institutions must do more than offer products; they must offer pathways. Education, simplified onboarding, and genuinely accessible advisory services are not optional add-ons. They are the infrastructure of a participatory economy.
Listed companies have a responsibility that extends beyond quarterly earnings. They must consistently demonstrate transparency, sound corporate governance, operational excellence and long-term value creation. Companies that invest patiently in productive assets while rewarding shareholders over time help deepen confidence in the market and encourage wider public participation. The experience of leading Nigerian enterprises, including companies within the Dangote Group, shows that sustained investment in the real economy can simultaneously create industrial capacity, support national development and deliver enduring value to investors.
At $117 billion, NGX’s capitalisation represents only about 35 per cent of GDP. Mature markets typically exceed 100 per cent. Closing that gap will require more quality listings, particularly from the productive sectors of the economy, where long-term capital can translate into long-term national growth.
Finally, technology providers must treat financial inclusion as a design constraint, not an afterthought. Connectivity gaps, low digital literacy, and transactional friction are not user problems. They are product problems.
Domestic investors now account for 77.79 per cent of total market activity, a structural shift that makes the market less exposed to global sentiment swings and more reflective of domestic economic conviction. That is a nation beginning to fund its own future.
As Nigeria seeks to build a more inclusive capital economy, the objective should not simply be to increase the number of investors. It should be to increase the number of successful Nigerian businesses capable of attracting long-term investment. Every globally competitive indigenous company that chooses transparency, governance and broad-based ownership strengthens both the capital market and the country’s economic resilience. The relationship is mutually reinforcing: vibrant companies deepen the market, while a vibrant market empowers the next generation of national champions.
The foundation exists. What comes next depends on whether all stakeholders can sustain the coordination that has made this growth possible and go further. A participatory capital economy is not an aspirational language. In Nigeria today, it is an unfinished project moving steadily in the right direction.
By Blaise Udunze
It is considered that in every organised society, the home is supposed to be a place of security. It should be where families find peace after a hard day’s work, where children grow, where dreams are nurtured, and where the pressures of life temporarily fade away. This narrative comes with keen interest, having witnessed that for millions of Nigerians, home has become the country’s newest economic battlefield. This is fast becoming the experience for the vast majority of Nigerians.
Across the length and breadth of Nigeria, citizens are deeply lamenting the skyrocketing rent. Regrettably, this has become one of the fastest-rising costs of living. An unexpected trend which has become a huge concern is that currently apartments that were rented for N700,000 or N1 million just a few years ago are now advertised for N3 million, N5 million or even higher. Amidst this bizarre development, do you know that they are often without significant improvements to the property itself? One key troubling development is that recent estimates suggest that house rents in many Nigerian cities have surged by between 100 and 300 per cent over the last two years, a pace that far exceeds the country’s official inflation rate and has placed unprecedented pressure on households already struggling with rising food, transportation and energy costs.
Landlords, through estate agents, increasingly demand one or two years’ rent upfront. Tenants are expected to pay 10 per cent of the principal rent toward agency fees, legal fees, agreement charges, caution deposits, and, in most cases, the service charge (which appears to be higher), security levies, and utility-related costs before receiving the keys. In many cases, these additional charges add hundreds of thousands or even millions of naira to the advertised rent, making the total cost of securing accommodation far beyond the reach of average-income earners. Equally disturbing is the unchecked exploitation by agent marauders, who prey on desperate house seekers by imposing outrageous and often illegal fees that further deepen Nigeria’s housing crisis. What should ordinarily be a routine life event has become a financial ordeal.
Nigeria’s housing crisis is no longer simply a property story. It has evolved into an economic emergency with profound implications for families, businesses, public health and national development.
The Federal Government’s National Housing Data Technical Committee estimates that Nigeria faces a housing deficit of approximately 15 to 20million homes. At the same time, millions of existing houses are considered structurally inadequate and lack access to essential infrastructure. If this figure is something to consider, anyone would know that these figures reveal two overlapping crises. First, this shows that millions of Nigerians cannot find decent accommodation, whilst millions more live in overcrowded, unsafe or poorly serviced housing.
At the same time, Nigeria’s population continues to expand rapidly, with cities absorbing hundreds of thousands of new residents every year.
One of the challenges is that urbanisation has consistently outpaced housing development, widening the gap between supply and demand while, predictably, rents continue to rise and affordability continues to decline.
Remarkably, housing experts generally recommend that households should spend no more than 30 per cent of their income on accommodation. For many Nigerian families, that recommendation has become almost impossible to achieve.
Teachers, nurses, journalists, police officers, civil servants, young bankers, entrepreneurs, artisans and other middle-income earners increasingly devote more than half of their annual income to rent alone. For many, housing has become the single largest financial obligation, leaving very little for every other necessity of life.
After paying landlords, food budgets shrink. Healthcare is postponed. Children are transferred to less expensive schools. Retirement savings disappear. Business investments are suspended. Vacations become unimaginable luxuries. The rent bill has become the first expense families think about and the last financial burden they can escape.
The effects extend far beyond individual households. This is totally outrageous, as financial analysts have long observed that when accommodation consumes a disproportionate share of disposable income, consumer spending across the economy inevitably weakens.
Families postpone replacing household appliances. Vehicle purchases are delayed. Furniture sales decline. Restaurants receive fewer customers. Clothing retailers experience lower patronage. Small businesses lose purchasing power from consumers whose earnings are now tied up in rent. The result is a vicious economic cycle in which rising housing costs suppress consumption, reduce business activity, and ultimately slow economic growth.
Behind every rent increase lies a deeply personal story. Consider a fictional but representative family whose experience mirrors that of countless Nigerians. The aspect of receiving notice that the annual rent for their modest two-bedroom apartment would rise from N1.2 million to N3 million comes with uneasiness. At this point, the Blessings’ family had spent months desperately searching for an alternative.
Unable to afford the increase and harassment from the landlord, they eventually relocated nearly 30 kilometres away from their former neighbourhood. The consequences were immediate. Their children had to change schools. The family’s daily commuting time doubled. Transportation costs rose sharply. Family time disappeared.
The father now leaves home before sunrise and returns late at night. The mother spends more each month commuting than she once spent on groceries. Their financial burden has not disappeared. It has merely shifted from rent to transportation and also deals with other issues like epileptic power supply and flooding, especially during this rainy season.
Unfortunately, such stories are no longer exceptional. They have become increasingly common across Nigeria’s major cities. Perhaps no demographic feels this pressure more acutely than young professionals.
Come to think of it, graduates entering the workforce quickly discover that entry-level salaries cannot support decent accommodation close to their workplaces. You would also see many remaining with their parents far longer than anticipated. Other effects include seeing them share apartments with several unrelated adults to reduce costs, whilst some endure daily commutes lasting three or four hours because affordable housing exists only in distant suburbs.
The fact is that the consequences extend beyond inconvenience because long commuting hours reduce productivity, increase fatigue, heighten stress levels and significantly diminish quality of life. Another aspect of this, which is discouraging, is that for many talented young Nigerians, financial independence, home ownership and family formation are becoming increasingly distant aspirations. Several interconnected forces explain why rents continue to climb so aggressively.
Inflation has significantly increased the cost of cement, steel, roofing sheets and virtually every construction material required to build houses. The depreciation of the naira has made imported building materials substantially more expensive. No doubt, from recent findings, there are clear indications that there is a significant increase in the prices of building materials. Let us see the period between 2024 to 2026, Cement: N6,500 – N13,000; blocks: N600 – N1100; 30T of sand: N165,000 – N250,000; 30T of granite: N530,000 – N780,000; rebars (iron) ton: N850,000 – N1,150,000 amongst others. To be fair, it is a known fact that high interest rates have increased borrowing costs for developers, while land acquisition remains prohibitively expensive in many urban centres. The very question at heart is, how has this recent development significantly impacted the apartments built five years ago and beyond?
The government has made it difficult to the point that obtaining development approvals can be slow and costly. Developers also contend with multiple taxes, infrastructure levies and rising labour costs before construction even begins. No doubt, these expenses inevitably find their way into rental prices. But one question keeps running through the minds of many, which is, how do these directly impact apartments built many years back? The truth is that market realities alone do not explain every increase.
In many locations, speculative pricing has taken hold. Some landlords have raised rents far beyond what can reasonably be attributed to maintenance or inflation, taking advantage of overwhelming demand and the severe shortage of available accommodation.
The inability of many Nigerians to purchase homes has further intensified the pressure on the rental market. Inflation, high mortgage rates and limited access to long-term housing finance have pushed home ownership beyond the reach of millions, forcing them to remain tenants for much longer than planned. This should be blamed on the government of the day, as more people compete for a limited supply of rental properties, landlords possess even greater leverage to increase prices.
Housing insecurity is also producing a less visible but equally damaging consequence for deteriorating mental health.
The constant fear of eviction, the uncertainty surrounding annual rent reviews and the enormous pressure of raising large lump sums every one or two years create persistent psychological stress.
Think of the impact of parents’ worry about disrupting their children’s education. Young couples postpone marriage because they cannot afford accommodation. Family disagreements increasingly revolve around financial pressures. Consider the part of many Nigerians who quietly or secretly or unknowingly battle anxiety, emotional exhaustion and depression arising from the struggle to secure decent housing.
None of these psychological costs clearly appear in official economic statistics, but the truth is that they profoundly affect productivity, family stability and overall well-being. It is equally obvious that the crisis is also affecting employers and businesses.
Workers forced to travel long distances arrive at work exhausted. Traffic congestion consumes valuable productive hours each day. It turns out that companies increasingly struggle to retain staff who relocate in search of affordable accommodation. Also, know that many employers face mounting pressure to increase housing allowances simply to remain competitive.
All these call for a balancing as employees demand higher wages to offset escalating living costs, further increasing operating expenses for businesses already contending with inflation, unstable exchange rates and rising energy prices.
Housing affordability is therefore no longer merely a social concern. It has become a business and national competitiveness issue.
Though Nigeria is not alone in confronting housing affordability challenges, its recent trend calls for attention. Across Africa, rapid urbanisation continues to outpace housing supply.
For this reason, Kenya has introduced ambitious affordable housing programmes aimed at expanding supply, although implementation challenges remain; this can’t be compared to Nigeria’s current situation. Ghana is not left out of the equation as it continues to battle a significant housing deficit. Ghana is also grappling with the irony of completed homes that remain unaffordable for many citizens. South Africa, despite possessing a relatively more developed mortgage market, continues to experience severe affordability pressures in cities such as Johannesburg and Cape Town.
Nigeria’s situation, however, is intensified by its enormous population, rapid urban expansion, limited mortgage penetration and one of Africa’s largest housing deficits.
Nigeria has witnessed successive governments introducing affordable housing initiatives, mortgage schemes and public-private partnerships which fails before implementation. While these programmes represent positive intentions, delivery has consistently fallen far behind growing demand.
Housing experts argue that meaningful reform requires far more than constructing a limited number of housing estates.
Nigeria must simplify land acquisition processes, reduce infrastructure costs, expand mortgage accessibility, improve planning approvals, encourage private-sector investment in affordable housing and strengthen incentives for developers willing to build homes for middle- and low-income earners.
Improving housing data is important, but accurate statistics alone cannot reduce rents. Effective implementation remains the country’s greatest policy challenge.
Let’s consider some of these salient points proffered by urban planners who insist that Nigeria’s housing crisis cannot be solved exclusively through market forces. According to them, governments at all levels must invest strategically in infrastructure and create financing mechanisms that reduce development costs. To further help reduce the housing gap, they encourage the construction of affordable rental housing rather than focusing disproportionately on luxury developments.
The truth is that if housing continues to consume an ever-growing share of household income, consumer spending, investment and long-term economic growth will remain constrained. Another key barrier that must be addressed quickly, as highlighted by researchers, is inflation, limited housing finance, weak regulatory enforcement and inconsistent policy implementation, which happen to be major bottlenecks to affordable housing delivery.
One key question that yearns for answers is whether it is not obvious to the government and other stakeholders that housing is far more than concrete walls, roofing sheets and painted ceilings? The fact is that shelter, as the meaning implies, shapes educational outcomes, influences public health, determines productivity, strengthens families, supports social mobility and contributes directly to national competitiveness.
At this stage, it is a complete shame and at the same time an irony that a nation where hardworking teachers, nurses, journalists, entrepreneurs, artisans, security personnel and civil servants cannot comfortably afford decent shelter risks weakening its middle class, widening inequality and undermining sustainable economic growth.
If the truth must be told, Nigeria’s rent crisis is therefore not merely about landlords and tenants. For a fact, it is about the future of work, family stability, economic opportunity and social justice. Clearly, it is about whether millions of hardworking citizens can enjoy the dignity that comes with secure and affordable housing.
The mistake all along, which must be eschewed, is that a country’s progress is being measured solely by the number of luxury estates it builds or the height of its skyscrapers. More importantly, it should also be measured by whether ordinary citizens can afford a safe place to call home without sacrificing their children’s education, healthcare, savings or future aspirations.
If this is not adequately addressed, this rent trap will persist until affordable housing becomes a genuine national priority backed by bold reforms and sustained implementation; millions of Nigerians will continue facing an impossible choice, which would invariably lead them to surrender their financial future to keep a roof over their heads or abandon the comfort, security and dignity that every family deserves.
Concerned stakeholders shouldn’t continue to believe that the true cost of Nigeria’s rent crisis is therefore measured only in naira. It is measured in postponed dreams, delayed marriages, fractured families, declining productivity, abandoned ambitions, struggling businesses and the quiet erosion of hope among citizens who work tirelessly every day but find the simple promise of a decent home slipping further beyond their reach.
Blaise, a journalist and PR professional, writes from Lagos and can be reached via: bl***********@***il.com
