Life stuck in traffic

Long before sunrise, at 5.30am, Ayodeji Monsuru, a civil servant and father of two who lives on the outskirts of Lagos, sets off for work. By the time he reaches his office in Maryland, in the heart of the metropolis, he has already spent two hours stuck in traffic on the bus, changed buses several times – and once again done the maths: living closer to work is simply not an option. The rent would swallow most of his salary. “So I leave home in the dark and come home in the dark,” he says. “It’s the only way I can keep my job.”

He shares this daily reality with many people in Lagos, where the housing crisis is deepening. Rents across the city have soared, far outpacing wages. This is forcing people to make difficult choices. Flats on the mainland that cost 500,000 naira, around €312, two years ago now often cost five times as much. On the islands that make up the city centre, rents have tripled, widening even further the gap between people’s incomes and what they can realistically afford to spend on housing.

“You pay the price with your time”

In the yellow Danfo buses that carry millions of passengers every day, the pressure faced by so many is palpable; commuters tell one another about all the compromises they have to make. A young nurse has moved into a shared flat in a cramped suburban apartment because she can no longer afford to live alone. Moving closer to her workplace would wipe out what little savings she has. “You simply pay the price with your time,” she says. “There’s no other option.”

Figures show just how serious the problem is. Lagos, Nigeria’s economic powerhouse, has a population of more than 20 million and is growing at breakneck speed. Yet the city is already short of 3.4 million homes, while 75 per cent of its residents live in informal settlements. Rising migration and construction costs are making the situation worse, while more and more homes are being converted into short-term rentals, displacing long-term tenants.

By 2100, Lagos is likely to be one of the world’s largest cities, meaning that its housing crisis will be even more acute.