INVESTIGATION: University Lecturers Sleep In Offices As Nigeria's Housing Crisis Reaches Alarming Levels (Nigeria)

 This is no joke. 

Mega Mode Media's investigation into this situation experienced between January and February 2026 reveal discovered very alarming results.

There is virtually no area of Lagos metropolis that you can rent a decent accomodation without spending millions of naira! In highbrow Lekki-Ajah corridor, a studio apartment costs at least N1.5 million. This is for lekki. That price can get a mini flat (one bedroom apartment) at Ajah.

     Houses in Lagos    Courtesy: Google 

Even in the suburbs like Egbeda, Iyana Ipajs, Abule Egba and low income areas kike Mushin, Ojuelegba, Yaba, Amuwo Odofin, Costain, and Isale Eko, a room and parlour self contained ( a one-bedroom apartment) , the least price a prospective renter gets is N1 m. One million naira. 

Unless one settles for virtually swampy, inhabitable houses and dangerous locales around certain areas at places like Ikorodu and Ajangbadi after Ojo, where rent could possibly hover around N350,000 to N450, 000 annually. This is minus the strangulating fees heaped on it by realtors which could be as much as the rent itself. So, a N350,000 one bedroom apartment can total N900,000 when the fees are tabulated and grand totalled. Those of N1.5m would grand total N2.6m when these other spurious charges are added.

Before, agency fee and legal agreement fees are the added charges. But now, service charges of as huge as N500,000, Caution fees, Security guard's salaries, etc are demanded and must compulsorily be paid totally before a renter is given the keys. 

The situation is the same in Abuja. Newer developments like Lokogoma, Gudu, Airport Road goes for N5 million annually for a two bedroom apartment. In older, established and more prestigious areas of Maitama and Asokoro, the rent doubles. In Garki and Wuse, Same flat can go for N3m. This is minus the added charges. 

In Port Harcourt, Mile 2, Diobu and Power line range from N1 million to N2 million for same size of apartment. GRA homes goes for double these prices. 

In other cities like Kano, Benin, Delta, Kwara, Taraba, this is the situation. A small sized room now goes for N1 million at least. Unless, one it's for single rooms with general share of kitchen and restrooms called "face-me I-face-you" in local parlance in mainly slums. 

Consequently, there is a current housing crisis in many Nigerian cities of epic proportions. Some are leaving Lagos in drives for close out of state suburbs like Sango-Ota, Ayetoro-Itele Ogun state. Even there, total rent package for houses of same size there is N700,000. 

Many still find that unbearable. The number of the homeless are soaring so much so that many churches have become rehabilitation shelters and informal IDPs for the increasing number of homeless people.

It has got so bad that members of the  academia are sleeping over in their offices due to their inability to pay abnormally high rents. 

About 40 percent of university lecturers now sleep in their offices due to the country’s worsening housing crisis, Timothy Nubi, a professor of estate management and sustainable housing advocate, University of Lagos, said.

Nubi disclosed this two days ago at the Film Screening and Conversation on Solidarity and Movement Building to Advocate for Inclusive Housing for the Urban Poor, held at the University of Lagos (UNILAG).

The occasion was organised by the Heinrich Boll Foundation, in conjuction with the Centre for Housing and Sustainable Development (CHSD), the African Cities Research Consortium (ACRC) and Rethinking Cities.

The professor said this is due to the inability of the lecturers to afford payment of at least N3.5 million annual rent for a 2-bedtoom apartment in Akoka, where the university is located. 

"hey sleep in their offices. You see them taking baths around the faculty every morning. That is the state of the country," Nubi said.

The professor explained that this the downward spiral that the housing crisis situation has turned hitherto middle class Nigerians to. 

The federal government needs to declare an emergency on housing immediately. 

Landlord's and estate  developers blame the high rents to the skyrocketing costs of building materials starting from cement, iron rods to finishing materials. Even landlords of old, standing houses that are not newly bought have increased house rents, citing the same higher cost of building materials. "That's the part I don't understand. Are they building the houses afresh? To cite same high costs of building materials as reason to hike tents if houses already built! This is how nugerns frustrate other Nigerians," Seun Agboola, a Lagos resident said. 

Chief Abegunde Latif, a Lagos landlord, said the house owners increase the rents because as it's the only retirement benefit that most of them live on, they have to increase rents of houses built before this era of costly housing materials to survive. "Costs if food, fuel and so have gone up, so we have to increase the rents too to cope," he said.

 Many of these with the exception of cement are largely  imported which, with the free fall of the naira against the dollar is extremely expensive nowadays. Landlords recoup these costs via high rents which many simply can't afford.