Sometimes when I drive around my estate I get amazed by the number of houses that are unoccupied. I live in a mini estate with about 500 houses altogether but 50% (if not more) of these houses have been unoccupied for years, some are occupied by just the gatekeepers who just clean around the houses while some nobody lives in it for years, grasses are already taking over the entrance gate.
More intriguing is the fact that the owners of these unoccupied houses are not willing to rent them out to tenants or sell them out even when there are multiple persons ready to rent them or buy them from the owners at a good price.
This is actually a common thing in Abuja. It’s rare to see a street, an estate or a close within the Abuja municipality with all the houses occupied. There must be some houses that have been under lock and key for years. I’m not talking about houses that are locked up by court order or houses that are under investigation by law enforcement agencies, I mean houses that the owners relocated somewhere and abandoned, and some were since it was built nobody ever lived in it. Not that the owners are positioning it for sale, they are not willing to sell or put it out for rent.
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The irony is that there is currently a housing problem in the city centre. There is a huge demand for houses around the city centre, the demand which had exceeded the supply thereby contributing to the high price of houses in the capital city. If you have ever done house hunting in Abuja you can fully relate to how much there are no houses for the ever-increasing population of Abuja but most of these houses that the owners or the agents claimed it is not vacant have been unoccupied for years in fact most of the owners of the houses no longer reside in Nigeria and are not ready to come back soon.
There is this estate along Katampe- Maitama Expressway, by the same side of Katampe Extension, the estate is just before AA Rano filling station (I intentionally do not want to mention the estate’s name) but if you are conversant with Abuja you will definitely know the place): if you are driving past there at night you must notice it due to the lightning coming out of the estate. That estate currently has some of the best houses in Abuja but to the best of my knowledge it’s been years after it was built and it is still unoccupied. Whenever I try to inquire about this estate and why it is unoccupied I always come to a dead end.
There are other numerous estates at life camp, airport road, Lugbe, Dawaki, Guzape, etc have been built and most if not all of the houses are not occupied for years. It is not a secret, residents of Abuja are aware of this. The reasons behind this constantly elude me, I heard that some of the estates are used to launder money, well, it’s just a rumour and I can not talk much on that until there is concrete evidence pointing me towards that direction.
What erks me the most is that cost of houses in Abuja are getting high every day by day and there are a lot of homeless persons who have been living in hotels and serviced apartment, they have the money to pay for good apartments around the city centre but they are told there is no vacant house in those choice areas but there are a lot of unoccupied houses.
Maybe the FCT minister needs to set up a task force to investigate this or maybe someone should be kind enough to educate me and others who are curious why there are so many fully built but unoccupied houses around Abuja city centre.