RISING HOUSE RENT: Working People and Youth Need to Build a Mass Campaign
Still struggling with hardship triggered by the anti-poor capitalist policies of Bola Tinubu government, there is a new outcry biting the flesh and breaking the bones of many working people and the poor, and it is the astronomical increase of house rent in different parts of Lagos and other states. Paying of rent is now a tough ladder for many people. Those who can’t afford to pay are evicted.
By Davy Fidel, Lagos
Many working people as tenants are complaining bitterly about it since their living conditions have turned upside down. Many landlords and landladies have begun to increase house rents as a way of increasing their income to address partly or fully the generally high cost of goods and services as a result of inflation triggered by the Tinubu government policies. In other words, as the cost of living is high and they also pay bills like every other person. Some have also argued that the costs of building materials are getting higher.
The increase could be as much 100% depending on the location and the quality of facilities. Sometimes, there is room for negotiation between the property owners and tenants. But to avert being evicted and becoming homeless, many tenants have to concede to the increments.
Of course, there is a Tenancy Law that was enacted in 2011 in Lagos to settle the dispute between landlords and tenants. But the law doesn’t stop the landlord from increasing his rent when he wants to do so. That is why when a new tenant wants to rent his house, the landlord still decides how much to rent it, who to give the rent to, and the rent.
The crisis that confronts the law is that the government is not building affordable houses for people to live with their families. If there are many government-built houses, the cost of renting a house will not be this high and the activities of shylock property owners and agents would be adequately checked.
But on the basis of capitalism especially in a backward neo-colonial country like Nigeria and at a period of neo-liberal offensive against living standards and to defend profits as the mainstream economic model coupled with the weakness of the labour movement globally, ruling elites don’t feel obliged to provide decent housing and improve the living standards of the working people. Rather, working people are thrown to the sea for property owners acting like sharks to exploit. In addition to this, it has also created another set of exploiters who charge and impose all kinds of fees (the legal fee, agency fee, caution fees agreement fees etc.) on tenants. These charges, apart from the rent, could be as much N500,000 for a two-bedroom apartment for instance. Sometimes, it is N1 million and above or fixed on a percentage of the total cost of rent.
It is not surprising that 39-year-old man told the Punch newspaper that the rent increment is affecting him emotionally, mentally, and physically because his wage hasn’t been able to keep to the “pace of inflation despite doing more work,” (Punch February 28, 2025). Many workers like him and even sections of middle-class people are finding it difficult to cope with the new increments. Some try to adjust to it, but the reality is that they can’t sustain it. In the poor communities like in the slums and ghettos of Agege, Bariga, Ajegunle, Makoko, and others, it is a different bad case. The rents are high and the facilities are poor. A single room without decent toilet and bathroom could cost N250,000 per annum!
The working people and youth including tenants and community activists have to build a mass movement that campaigns that government institutes a rent control policy under a democratic control. At the same time the movement must consistently fight against anti-poor policies which account for steep inflation and high cost of living usually cited as one of the reasons for outrageous rents. It should also demand that the government at all levels carry out building of decent and affordable mass housing across the country to end the shortage through a workers democratically controlled public works program. The government should also take over unoccupied big houses with compensation paid on the basis of needs to accommodate ordinary people without home. The movement should also campaign against demolition without alternative provision by the government. To reduce the cost of building materials such that they are affordable for ordinary people, the cement, construction and steel industries will have to be nationalized and put under democratic control of the working people.
Unfortunately, it is difficult to achieve all these under a capitalist government especially a neo-liberal variant as it has obtained since the advent of the Structural Adjustment Programme in 1986. But while the different austerity programmes have worsened the situation the housing crisis is, at root, an example of capitalism’s crisis and the ‘financialisation’ of housing as its shortage is exploited. Thus worldwide in most countries there is now a housing shortage and increasing rents, for example anyone with family in Britain knows about the severe housing crisis there.
The end of the “oil boom” in early 1980’s and decisive shift of Nigerian capitalism towards neo-liberalism and speculation explains why no government at all levels since the return to civilian rule in 1999 has built a decent, affordable mass housing unlike what obtained in Lagos for instance under Lateef Jakande between 1979 and 1983. This is why such a movement, which we advocate, has to be also linked with the effort at building a mass working people party on a socialist program to wrest political power. This is in order to form a government that, on the basis of democratic socialist planning, mobilizes and uses the resources of the society to provide decent housing and other basic needs like education, health care, sanitation, etc for the vast majority.