Addressing The Housing Crisis In Rivers

The recent appeal by the Cross River State Government to landlords to exercise compassion over frequent and excessive increments in house rents deserves applause, even if it is unlikely to achieve much on its own. The Commissioner for Lands, Mr Erasmus Ekpang, while addressing journalists in Calabar, captured the prevailing mood succinctly when he observed that there is already enough suffering in the land, with residents grappling with escalating costs of food, transportation and other essentials. His entreaty that property owners should view their holdings not merely as investments but as homes deserving of dignity and stability is a moral intervention that resonates far beyond Calabar.

While Cross River has chosen the path of moral suasion, the situation in Rivers State, particularly in its capital Port Harcourt, presents a far more acute and pressing emergency that demands more than pleas. The Cross River experience merely provides a mirror for a deeper, more entrenched malady here. If accommodation has become expensive in Calabar, in Port Harcourt it has become prohibitive, and indeed, for many low and middle-income families, unattainable.

In Port Harcourt and Obio/Akpor today, securing decent shelter has become an ordeal defined by exorbitant charges. A modest one-bedroom flat now commands as much as one million naira per annum in many areas, while a finished apartment with Plaster of Paris ceiling can attract between N1.5 million and N1.7 million. These figures are not isolated; they represent the new normal in parts of Diobu, Rumuokoro, Peter Odili Road, and other densely populated axes. The consequence is a relentless displacement of tenants who have occupied premises for years but can no longer meet arbitrary increases.

The weight of this crisis is felt most keenly by the ordinary citizen. The average civil servant, whose minimum wage remains grossly inadequate against market realities, finds it increasingly impossible to reside within the city he serves. In Bonny, the situation is even more outrageous, driven by the presence of oil and gas operations, where rents rival those of highbrow districts in Lagos and Abuja. Families are being frustrated out of their homes, livelihoods are being disrupted, and workers are forced to relocate to distant peripheries, with attendant costs in time and transportation. It is a burden too heavy to bear.

This local agony must be situated within a national catastrophe. Nigeria faces an estimated housing deficit of 28 million units, a figure consistently cited by the Federal Ministry of Housing and Urban Development (2023) and corroborated by the World Bank (2023). The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) reported in its Consumer Price Index of late 2024 that housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels contributed significantly to headline inflation, which peaked at 34.19 per cent in June 2024. When shelter, a fundamental human need, becomes this unaffordable, the social contract begins to fray.

Affordability indices further illuminate the hardship. According to the NBS Nigerian Labour Force Survey 2023, over 63 per cent of Nigerians are classified as multidimensionally poor, spending more than 60 per cent of their income on housing and food alone. For a civil servant on Grade Level 08 in Rivers State earning less than N150,000 monthly, a rent of N1 million per annum consumes over 55 per cent of annual income, far above the 30 per cent threshold recommended by UN-Habitat (2022) for housing affordability. This is not merely a market fluctuation; it is a systemic impoverishment.

We cannot feign ignorance of the role of government inaction in compounding this deficit. For a protracted period, the Rivers State Government has largely abandoned the housing sector as a social responsibility. The low-cost housing estates at Aggrey Road and other locations built under former Governor Peter Odili provided modest relief. His successor, Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, initiated some developments, notably the Golf Estate and other schemes, but many remained incomplete or inaccessible to the poor. Under Nyesom Wike, there was little demonstrable interest in mass housing for low-income earners, with priority accorded to roads, flyovers and other infrastructure.

Regrettably, the housing projects undertaken by the present administration appear not to be tailored for the average citizen or the indigent. They are priced beyond the reach of the very people most in need of intervention. When government housing is targeted at the affluent, it ceases to be a social programme and becomes a commercial venture, leaving the chasm between supply and demand to be exploited by speculative landlords and agents.

Part of that exploitation is fuelled by the spiralling cost of building materials. Data from the NBS Construction Price Index (2024) and the Cement Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (2024) show that the price of a 50kg bag of cement rose from about N4,500 in early 2023 to between N12,000 and N15, 000 by 2026, an increase of several per cent. Sharp sand, granite, reinforcement bars and agency fees have followed a similar trajectory. The Central Bank of Nigeria (2024) also linked this to foreign exchange volatility and high logistics costs. When construction becomes this expensive, only high-rent properties can guarantee returns, thus perpetuating the cycle.

It is for this reason that moral appeals alone, such as that issued in Cross River, will not suffice in Rivers. What is imperative is legislative intervention. Ebonyi State has provided a worthy precedent, where government fixed rental ceilings for different categories of accommodation and drastically reduced agency and legal fees to two per cent, with enforcement mechanisms. Rivers State should act likewise, enacting a tenancy law that curtails arbitrary rent hikes, standardises agency charges, and provides protection against capricious eviction. Shelter cannot be left entirely to market forces.

The long-term solution lies in massive public investment in housing. The state government must return to direct construction of low-cost and medium-income estates in Port Harcourt, Obio/Akpor, Eleme, and Bonny, as a deliberate strategy to flood the market and force down rental values. Concurrently, it must collaborate with the Federal Government and private sector to subsidise building materials, streamline land titling, and regulate the activities of housing agents. The burden on the average individual is already too heavy. To restore dignity, stability and productivity to our people, government must treat housing not as a privilege, but as a right.