Lagos, the ceremonious Centre of Excellence, has become a city where finding a decent place to live feels like a battle against invisible forces hell-bent on making life miserable for its residents. Just yesterday, a friend of mine, after weeks of house hunting, finally found a modest self-contained apartment in Oshodi. The rent? N400,000. The total package? A mind-boggling N750,000. And before you ask—yes, this is excluding the ‘registration’ and ‘inspection’ fees she had already coughed up to an agent whose only job was to show her the house. If this isn’t daylight robbery, I don’t know what is.
The rent crisis in Lagos is no longer a whisper of discomfort; it is a deafening scream of distress from thousands of residents being priced out of their own city. While the state government sits on its hands, agents and landlords continue to exploit the desperation of house seekers, turning the process of securing accommodation into an extortionist’s dream. The question remains: how did we get here, and more importantly, how do we fix it?
Lagos house agents have become the modern-day tormentors of the struggling Nigerian, wielding absurd agency fees like weapons of mass destruction. How do you justify charging nearly double the rent in the name of legal and caution fees? In what sane economy does a N500,000 apartment suddenly balloon into N1.2 million simply because a middleman wants to line his pockets? The unchecked greed has turned the housing market into a jungle, where the fittest—read: the richest—survive, and the rest are left to wander from one overpriced, rundown house to another.
The Enugu State House of Assembly, in a bold move, has decided to rein in the excesses of landlords and agents through a proposed amendment to the 2004 Landlord and Tenant Law. The bill, championed by Okey Mbah, seeks to cap agent fees at 10% of the annual rent and eliminate exploitative charges like caution and management fees.
“It is basically proposed to address the arbitrary and high cost charged by agents in Enugu State in the course of procuring house rents from prospective tenants. This high cost to prospective tenants comes with no regulations as the rent markets have become a free-for-all, with most persons posing as agents defrauding innocent accommodation seekers. These agents disappear without a trace in most cases,” Mbah declared.
He also noted that “Section 3 of this amendment proposed an amount not exceeding 10 per cent of the annual rent as an agent fee, and Section 4 also proposed the same to apply to the legal fee charged.
“The bill, at the same time, seeks to abolish other arbitrary charges like caution fees, management bills, and other hidden charges added to prospective tenants”.
The bill has received overwhelming public support, not just in Enugu but across Nigeria, particularly in Lagos, where housing woes are at their peak. But the bigger question is: Why is Lagos—the state with the highest population and the most notorious rent crisis—not championing a similar legislation?
Every year, Lagosians wake up to fresh horrors: a friend suddenly finds out that their landlord has increased their rent by 150% with only three months’ notice; a family living in a mini-flat is asked to pay two years’ rent upfront for a house with no running water; another person gets evicted because they dared to question a bogus service charge. It is an unending cycle of exploitation.
Twitter, now X, has become a lamentation ground where frustrated tenants share their horror stories:
@PrecyN_: “We need a body that regulates Lagos landlords, honestly it’s so unfair. There is no reason to rent your BQ with no kitchen or anything for 1m or 800k but that’s what everybody is doing in Lagos. It’s so unfair to people.”
@daveek10: “If things continue at this trajectory in terms of house rents, most of us won’t be able to live in Lagos anymore.”
@Dontee___: “People will soon start moving from the island to the mainland while those in places like Gbagada and Surulere fit end up in the innermost part of Egbeda. There’s a rent crisis in Lagos that I wouldn’t mind if the government stepped in to regulate. People will end up working just to pay rent. It’s sad!”
The pattern is clear: Lagos is becoming unlivable for the average working-class Nigerian. The city is stretching its people thin, forcing many to move farther from their workplaces, endure grueling traffic, and ultimately live lives that revolve around mere survival rather than growth or fulfillment.
One of the most overlooked yet major culprits in this crisis is the house agent. These self-appointed gatekeepers of the rental market have weaponized scarcity to extract exorbitant fees from desperate seekers. A large percentage of the “agency” fees charged are arbitrary, unexplained, and often non-refundable. They play on the fears of tenants, using phrases like “better pay now before another person takes it” to create an artificial sense of urgency.
Rent regulation in Lagos is not just necessary—it is long overdue. The state government must take a cue from Enugu and enact laws that:
1. Cap agent fees at a reasonable percentage of the rent, as proposed in Enugu’s bill.
2. Abolish multiple hidden charges, including caution, agreement, and legal fees that make renting a house an impossible task.
3. Introduce an independent housing regulatory body to oversee compliance and hold erring landlords and agents accountable.
4. Enforce annual rent increments within reasonable limits, preventing arbitrary hikes that force tenants out of their homes.
5. Establish affordable housing initiatives, ensuring that low- and middle-income earners are not perpetually at the mercy of exploitative property owners.
Lagos prides itself as the economic heartbeat of Nigeria, but a city where the average citizen cannot afford shelter is a city on the brink of a social catastrophe. The government must step in before it is too late. If nothing is done, we may wake up one day to find that Lagos is no longer a place where people live, but a place where only the super-rich exist while the rest are pushed out, one exorbitant rent increase at a time.
Stanley Ugagbe is a Social Commentator. He can be reached via stanleyakomeno@gmail.com
