Lagos State Deputy Governor, Obafemi Hamzat, has advised young workers struggling with rising rents to consider living with their parents, relatives or sharing accommodation rather than taking on apartments they cannot comfortably afford.
Hamzat said young people should choose housing based on their income and financial capacity, particularly at the early stages of their careers.
He gave the advice on Thursday during a question-and-answer session with Nigeria Info FM, while responding to concerns about how a 22-year-old earning N100,000 monthly could afford a self-contained apartment or mini-flat costing about N1m annually.
“Don’t let us misunderstand ourselves as a people. We are cultural people. Do you understand? So, if I start work as a young person and I’m not married, a lot of us live with our parents. A lot of us live with our cousins,” Hamzat said.
“You know, go to Turkey, for example, and see how young people also live.”
The deputy governor said there was no need for young workers to see self-contained apartments as the immediate standard for independent living when their earnings could not sustain such costs.
“So, if you don’t start from the top self-contained, you don’t start from the top. You start from the average depending on,” the deputy governor said.
Hamzat also advised residents to keep their rent expenses within a manageable proportion of their earnings, noting that workers had to cover other essential costs such as food, clothing and transportation.
“In fact, if you spend more than 40 per cent of your income on rent, it is too high because you must eat, you must buy clothes, you must do transportation,” he said.
Beyond rental costs, Hamzat said the state was pursuing a housing strategy centred on mortgage financing to make home ownership more accessible to residents.
He argued that buying homes through one-off payments was unrealistic for many Nigerians and said Lagos had a mortgage board to support residents who could demonstrate their ability to repay housing loans.
“But, you know, the challenge is we cannot continue to buy houses the way we buy rice and yam. Do you understand? So, we must buy properties using a mortgage, and that’s why we have a mortgage board in Lagos,” Hamzat said.
He explained that the Lagos State Residents Registration Agency number was being used to establish residents’ identities, addresses and workplaces, information he said could help determine whether applicants were capable of meeting mortgage repayments.
“So, that’s why we said people must have LASRRA number, so we can know that, okay, you live in Lagos. This is where you live. This is your address. This is where you work. So that there is a credit bill that checks everything that says, okay, you can pay,” he said.
Using a N7m property in Bisedi as an example, Hamzat said a prospective homeowner could make a 10 per cent initial payment and repay the balance over 10 years.
“So, if a flat in Bisedi, which is seven million naira, you pay 10 per cent with 700,000, and over 10 years, you are able to pay monthly,” he said.
He said the monthly repayment would depend on the buyer’s financial capacity.
“Some people pay 25,000 monthly or 35,000, whatever it is, depending on your income,” Hamzat said.
According to him, spreading payments through mortgages would provide an alternative for residents unable to raise the full purchase price of a home at once.
“That is the way to go because we know that a lot of people will not be able to afford to pay a one-shot deal,” he said.
Hamzat further encouraged young residents to begin with modest housing options and work towards home ownership as their earnings and savings grow.
“But the bottom line is, like I said, the culture of ability to save, so that if people see that you can save money, then I can give you a property.
“It doesn’t have to be, if you are a young person, you can start with one bedroom or even a self-contained, like you explained,” he said.
He also acknowledged that housing affordability could not be separated from the broader state of the economy, stressing the need for better incomes to help residents cope with living costs.
“What is important is we must also build our economy in such a way that people earn better, you understand, so that everybody can be uplifted, and that is the bottom line,” he said.
Hamzat said stabilising the cost of living would also make it easier for residents to plan their finances and manage housing expenses.
“The cost of buying things is what we need to fix first, and then when we fix that, which is what the Federal Government is doing now, then we’ll be able to talk a lot more about other pillars that stop on top of that,” Hamzat said.