Soaring House Rents: Nigeria’s Hidden Epidemic

By Ugo Inyama

Nigeria’s housing crisis is no longer about bricks and mortar. It’s about bodies and minds. As rents explode, families are skipping food, medicine and school fees just to stay under a roof. The country is getting sick — literally.

In Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt, rents have doubled in two years. Inflation hovers near 30%. Many households now hand more than half their income to landlords, leaving scraps for hospital bills or balanced meals. The World Bank warns that when rent swallows income, malnutrition and untreated illness follow. Nigeria proves it every day.

The damage isn’t only financial — it’s biological. The World Health Organization links poor housing to anxiety, depression and heart disease. In Nigeria, the fear of eviction, landlord harassment or sudden rent hikes shows up as sleepless nights, weakened immunity and fraying mental health. Call it what it is: a public-health disaster with generational consequences.

To cope, families are packing tighter. Three-bedroom flats sliced into cubicles. Single rooms with shared kitchens and toilets. This improvisation may seem clever, but it spreads disease faster. Tuberculosis thrives in crowded rooms. Poor ventilation worsens asthma. Shared facilities heighten cholera risk. Cramped spaces also trigger conflict and gender-based violence. What’s sold as adaptation is actually social decay, eroding dignity and hope along with health.

Behind it all sits a staggering housing deficit — 17 to 28 million homes short. Meeting demand would take nearly a million new units every year. Instead, imported materials, inflated land prices and double-digit interest rates choke construction. The gap grows. The health toll deepens. Without deliberate intervention, Nigeria risks locking a whole generation into unhealthy and unsafe living conditions.

Nigeria needs a radical reset.

Treat housing as medicine. Every affordable home is a public-health intervention. It cuts hospital visits, improves childhood development and lengthens life expectancy. Housing policy should sit alongside vaccines, clinics and clean water in the national health strategy.

Spread growth beyond Lagos and Abuja. Secondary cities can host new housing, jobs and transport links. This would ease pressure on overstretched megacities and create balanced development. Mexico’s “Ecocasa” model — homes tied to clean energy and healthier living — shows how. Nigeria can adapt it to its own urban fabric.

Unlock real finance, not token funds. The Federal Government’s ₦1 trillion ($650m) mortgage fund is a good start, but without cheaper land, incentives for producing local building materials and rent-to-own options as part of a home-ownership strategy, it’s window dressing. Updated rent-control measures in urban hotspots must also be back on the table to shield citizens from exploitation. Financial innovation, such as community land trusts and diaspora-backed housing bonds, can complement government funds and spread risk.

This crisis is bigger than economics — it’s human. Soaring rents are draining lives. Malnourished children. Exhausted parents. Slums breeding disease. Human capital leaking away because housing is unaffordable. Unless Nigeria acts, the health bill and human-capital losses will dwarf the cost of building homes. The longer the state delays, the steeper the price future governments will pay in health spending, lost productivity and public unrest.

Housing is not a luxury. It’s not charity. Housing is health. Until Nigeria accepts this, the nation will struggle to confront the depth of this emergency at its foundation. A society that cannot shelter its people cannot safeguard its future.

*Ugo Inyama writes from the African Digital Governance Centre, Manchester, UK.
www.africandgc.org