Nigeria’s inflation rate has been on a steady rise, leading to a widespread increase in prices of goods and services, especially food but also building materials.
The country’s inflation rate rose to 14.23 percent in October from 13.71 percent in September, the highest since February 2018, according to data by the state-run National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
Analysts reason that while rising food inflation has grave implications for household income and health of family members, the increase in the price of building materials, especially cement which price has gone up considerably, means that home seekers have more time to wait while both developers and buyers have to spend more.
The increase in prices has been made worse by Nigeria’s unduly prolonged border closure and the crippling impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on both local and global economies.
BusinessDay survey of some local building materials markets shows that prices of major building inputs, including cement, roofing sheets, iron rods, also known as reinforcement, have gone up considerably.
The price of the roofing material called Alu-zinc, a galvanised steel with metal coating composed of aluminum, rose from N18,000 per bundle in October to N19,500 in November.
Rasheed Bello, a dealer in Isolo area of Lagos, explained to BusinessDay that the brand has been topping the demand for roofing sheets because of its fashionable designs and the ‘moderate’ prices.
Bello added that well-heeled consumers are increasingly pitching tents with the stone-coated variant which is currently the most expensive at N2,500 per square metre.
“But moderate spenders are settling for Alu-zinc or ordinary zinc which costs even less,” he said.
Depending on the brand, the price of a 50kg bag of cement has risen from N2,500, N2,650, and N2,700 between September and October to N3,000, N3,200, and N3,500, respectively. Dangote brand remains the toast of the market and, therefore, attracts a higher price than any other.
Iron rod, another major building, and construction component, now goes for between N280,000-N290,000 per ton while a ton of granite now sells for N190.000. A truckload of sharp sand goes for N80,000 while a bag of nail sells for N10,000.
But more than other building materials, the increase in the price of cement means a lot for the building industry.
Johnson Chukwuma, a structural engineer, said apart from the tendency by property developers to compromise on quality in their projects, achieving lower construction costs and making housing affordable would continue to be a dream deferred.
At Pako building materials market in Iyan-Ira, along Lagos-Badagry Expressway, Ayodeji Jimoh, a cement dealer, explained that the rise in the price of cement was due to a number of factors. Apart from the scarcity of the product in the open market, leading to panic buying by builders, he said, cement price usually goes up at this period of the year.
Jimoh could not, however, confirm the speculation in some quarters that there was an increase in the price of the product by one of the manufacturers. He could not dismiss the speculation either, saying, “Maybe that was the cause of the problem in the market.”
The rise in the price of cement has directly impacted the price of molded blocks which has moved from N250.00 per unit to N300 per unit for the 9” hole-block, and from N200 to N240 per unit for the 6” block.
Temitope Awotokun, managing director of Topetokun Blocks Industry in the Ijanikin area of Lagos, confirmed the new prices of blocks in an interview, blaming it partly on the Lagos State government’s new directive issued to block moulders.
“The adjustment in the price of blocks is due to the directive by the Lagos State government for us to increase the quality of blocks used in building houses in order to reduce the high incidence of building collapse in the state,” he said.
“But the new price increase is as a result of the increase in the price of cement. We have to increase the price of the blocks in order to recover the cost of the cement and have something left for our troubles,” he said.
