By Gabriel Efe
The recent announcement by the Lagos State Government to introduce a monthly and quarterly rent payment system is, at face value, a welcome development. After all, it is an open secret that most working-class Nigerians are suffocated by the burden of annual, sometimes even two-year, rent demands. The idea of breaking rent into more manageable chunks sounds progressive, empathetic, and perhaps overdue. But beyond the press statements and policy intentions lies a more complicated story. One that raises the question: is this truly sustainable, or are we just tinkering with imported ideas without building the systems to support them?
We must first confront a persistent flaw in our policy development, the ease with which we transplant ideas that have thrived elsewhere without replicating the institutional scaffolding that made them work in the first place. Monthly rent payments work in the UK, the US, and other parts of the developed world not just because they sound good, but because they are underpinned by an ecosystem that supports them. There is a credit infrastructure. There is mortgage access. There are enforceable rental contracts, functioning dispute resolution mechanisms, and a consistent supply of public or subsidised housing. There is trust.
In Nigeria, and Lagos particularly, the government has not demonstrated a capacity to build or subsidise housing at scale. The real estate market has largely been left in the hands of private developers and individuals, many of whom see property as one of the last viable investment options in an economy fraught with risk. In this context, landlords are not faceless corporations but regular people betting on housing as their pension, their inheritance, their hedge.
To now create a framework that effectively forces landlords to collect rent monthly without a safety net, no tenant risk protection, no guarantees, no tax breaks, no credit system, and risks punishing private citizens for stepping in where the government has failed. It violates the free market principle of allowing investors to determine their risk appetite and return models. It also sets up a dangerous precedent where government policy ambitions are not matched with enabling structures.
There is, of course, the human side to all of this. Many Lagosians cannot afford to pay one to two years’ rent upfront. They live from paycheck to paycheck. The case for easing their burden is strong, morally and economically. But it must be done right. Not by coercion. Not by fiat. And certainly not without extensive stakeholder consultation. Landlords, developers, tenant associations, banks, cooperatives, and insurers: all need to be brought to the table.
We must also be wary of the pilot-and-fail model of policy implementation, where poorly thought-out plans are launched for optics and inevitably collapse under their weight, only to be cited years later as failed experiments when the real work is finally ready to be done. Nigeria has too many of these. Initiatives designed to fail, announced for applause, and abandoned without consequence.
The monthly rent policy must not be another illusion. If we are serious, then let us match policy with investment. Build public housing. Introduce rent insurance schemes. Create a housing credit guarantee system. Offer tax incentives to landlords who opt in. Put in place enforcement systems to protect both the tenant and the property owner. Only then can we say we are building, not just borrowing.
As always, it is not the idea that is flawed. It is the shallow execution that worries us. Our curiosity has been raised too many times, only to be dashed. Nigerians are not asking for too much, just that when our governments promise, they do not deliver failure in instalments.
