Nigeria’s Housing Deficit and the Search for Skyscrapers in the Real Estate Sector

There was a rush of adrenaline. It was just a year short of Nigeria’s 20th independence anniversary. The skylines were bereft of tall buildings. Nothing to compare to the Tower of Babel of ancient fame left uncompleted at its prime. As Nigeria almost turned a full circle of the second decade, a giant rose in the sky. It was a delight to behold, a sensation in the sky. Embraced by the clouds and caressed by the sun, it glistened in splendour. Towering and shimmering above any known tall building in Africa’s most populous nation, the NET Building (NITEL, NECOM) has stood the test of time as the incontrovertible tallest building in Nigeria. It is number four in Africa and 234 in the world.

42 years later, not much has changed. No other building has dared to beat the height. Nigeria’s housing developers have been afraid of heights, and it’s compounding the country’s housing crisis.

Nigeria’s real estate industry is young and vibrant, developing fast and increasingly attracting investors, especially in economically advantaged states like Lagos, Port Harcourt, and the country’s capital, Abuja

With an exploding population and rising housing deficit estimated at 17 million driving the demand, experts have predicted a bright outlook of 10 to 20 per cent value increase for Nigeria’s real estate market in 2021, despite COVID-19 downturns. However, as the industry bubbles to a brighter future, its failure to bridge the widening housing deficit gap pinpoints a giant vacuum in its housing development mechanism.

There are many real estate companies in Nigeria, concentrating on the states where housing demand is higher. Each of the developers marketed multiple lands, houses, and office space properties. One peculiar thing notably missing in their catalogue is skyscrapers (high-rise buildings), a housing infrastructural system that has seen highly populated and landlocked countries like China and Singapore stem the tide of housing deficit.

In 2014, Dr Anthony Ede, in a study on ‘Challenges Affecting the Development and Optimal Use of Tall Buildings in Nigeria,’ attributed lack of tall buildings in Nigeria to factors such as “a 100 per cent absence of regulation for high rise construction and maintenance, about 90 per cent lack of domestic expertise for high rise buildings and poor public supply of electricity and water.”

But there is more.

“The barriers include cultural bias to high rise, lack of technology, epileptic power supply, poor maintenance culture, poor fire service delivery, inadequate policies, and investment funding,” said Prof Adeolu Afolabi said in his research work ‘Vertical Architecture Construction: Prospects and Barriers in Solving Lagos Housing Deficit’.

Many real estate developers believe the major constraint is funding, and it is multidimensional. They said it is not just about the cash, but the things that will unlock cash are not exactly easy. They said, in Nigeria, it is difficult to use the land as asset-backed security to unlock financing. So, it becomes a situation where people have to put in raw cash instead of that asset to unlock the cash.

With a booming population of more than 206 million people, Nigeria can only boast of about 40 high-rise buildings. The 526ft 32-storey NECOM House in Lagos built in 1979, leads the pack, while the rest, located in different parts of the country, fall under 500ft, with the least being under 200ft. Most buildings were constructed before 2000, highlighting skyscrapers’ missing features in emerging Nigeria’s real estate market.

Although there have been attempts to bridge the gap with ongoing projects like the $1 billion Abuja World Trade Centre and the multibillion-dollar Eko Atlantic City, the high-rise feature in Nigeria significantly falls short.

The slow progress of the projects is attributed to poor funding, which developers said is the main reason few high-rises dot the skyline of Africa’s most populous country. But apart from funding, the three most feared hazards of tall buildings, fire, terrorist attacks, and building collapse, have also been fingered as factors hampering the development of high-rise buildings in Nigeria.

Some real estate developers believe that the lack of government participation and support is also stymieing the potential growth of high-rise buildings in Nigeria, as poor economic policies and developments have spooked foreign direct investment.

They pointed out that Dubai has a record of developing high-end mixed-use structures by giving tax holidays to the developer and those that will occupy the building and other forms of incentives like pioneer status, but these incentives are lacking in Nigeria.

For a landlocked place like Lagos, the lack of skyscrapers in Nigeria’s real estate development only exacerbates its housing crisis buoyed mainly by its meagre land size of about 1,171.28 square kilometres, a landmass so cramped for its over 20 million population. Although other places like Abuja, Calabar, Port Harcourt, and Enugu, with distressing housing situations, have larger landmass, they face major housing crises in the near future.

The United Nations projects Nigeria’s population will double in 2050, reaching about 401.31 million due to its 3.2 per cent yearly growth rate. With an anticipated future full of people, the remedy for Nigeria’s housing crisis lies greatly in incorporating high-rise buildings in its emerging real estate market.

Learning from China and Singapore

When it comes to housing, China and Singapore share common challenges with Nigeria. In China, the challenge is a large population of people. While in Singapore, it is a limited landmass, a situation similar to Lagos. China has more populated regions than Nigeria but has managed to contain its housing deficit using the high-rise building template. With more than 1400 skyscrapers above 492 ft constructed, the South Asian giant has the largest number of tall buildings in the world. This number of tall buildings has enabled China to shelter its over 1.4 billion people, the largest population in the world.

Singapore, with a landmass of 728.6km, is one of the smallest countries in the world. Home to a growing population of multicultural groups and a tourist centre, the Asian country has constructed more than 8,600 high-rise buildings, a development believed to have helped eliminate its housing crisis.

A real estate developer, Dim Chukwu, said for Nigeria to meet its affordable housing needs, high-rise buildings must come into play. “Developers are concerned about so many factors. There is a lack of funds, and there is a lack of expertise to construct tall buildings. Individuals are only building what they can afford to build. The government is not showing enough commitment, and major real estate companies are concerned about return on investment,” he noted.

Ede explained that to harness the many advantages of high-rise buildings fully, the government and all stakeholders must take bolder steps to confront the challenges. “This will go a long way in providing an answer to the problem of inadequate housing in Nigeria, particularly in Abuja and Lagos, where there is limited availability of buildings and usable land,” he said.