House rents have jumped to over 300% in Port Harcourt and most other cities in Nigeria. The way it is spiking every day, households may begin to move under the numerous flyovers that Nyesom Wike left behind in the Garden City in his days as ‘Mr Projects.’ Agreed that some of the flyovers received flaks from the masses who said they could not see where some of them ended except into neighbourhoods. Now, the underbelly of those flyovers may offer shelter to households.
What is obvious is that some apartments that went for about N250,000 now go for N1.5m after some retouching called renovation. On the average, some self-contained apartments (glorified one room enclosures) have been offered for N500,000. On the average, two-bedroom places now go for N1m. Many say, God forbid, but it is happening.
News from Abuja, Lagos and some other cities are not far different. The masses are scared because many peoples seem to still be enjoying old rates that may change any moment soon.
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Beyond moving into the belly of flyovers, options being considered by most families include moving to the villages, moving to the outskirts of the Garden City at cheaper rates, and moving into batchers. The issue is, batcher life is big in the Garden City. Some persons move their families to their villages and find a batcher in the city to ‘hide’ till things improve. Persons who did so during GEJ remained hopeful till PMB met them, and now, PBAT has met and crushed them.
Now, some have mooted the idea of protests. Last two weeks, tenants and civil society groups in PH protested over what they termed 150% rent hike. They said this has precipitated a housing crisis and attendant socio-economic impact on the state. Many say Nigeria has housing deficit of up to 28m.
C.W. Enwefah, lawyer and activist, placed the hike at almost 300%, adding that self-contained apartments of not more than N200,000 now go for up to N700,000, fearing that by the end of the year, it would get to N1.2m.
Enwefah rejected the popular excuse that its because of population explosion but claimed it is artificially created. He said it’s the Ministry of Urban Development that created the artificial scarcity in housing by giving permit to house owners to convert rooms to flats.
