Rising cement prices drag homeownership dreams

Once again, many Nigerians who want to own homes have been compelled to defer their dreams as prices of building materials, notably cement and iron rods also known as reinforcement, have jumped by over 100 percent in the last 12 months

For Israel Okafor, a middle-aged man and a father of four, the present hike in the price of cement is an evil wind. It marks the third time he is taking a break on his building project which he started in October 2023.

Okafor, a civil servant, shared his experience with BusinessDay in tears. “I have worked for close to 20 years now and am still struggling to build my own house. Since October 2023 when I started to build a three-bedroom bungalow in Lusada, Ogun State, frequent hikes in the price of cement has not allowed me to make progress,” he said.

“For me, it is a dream deferred and to worsen my plight, house rents are taking a turn for the worse as landlords are not showing any mercy with increases in their house rents.

“My first rent for the two-bedroom in which I am living currently with my family was N80,000 per annum. That was in 2019.Today, I am paying ₦300,000 and my landlord has served me a notice of ₦50,000 increase by January 2025,” he lamented.

Okafor is not alone in this situation. Lagos-based Kingsley Aisegame, who works in Victoria Island but lives in Ayetoro, a rural community in Ojo area of Lagos, said he has a building project he started two years ago, hoping to finish and pack in by middle of this year.

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“When I started this project, a bag of cement was selling for between N4000 and N5000. Now, the same bag of cement is selling for almost N10,000 depending on the brand or location. Sometime, this year, it sold for between ₦12,000 and ₦15,000,” he said.

The situation is just frustrating, according to Ojo Anuoluwa, who lives in Ijesha, Surulere, and has been nursing the ambition of either building or buying a house anywhere on the outskirts of Lagos. “In 2022, I visited one estate where a three-bedroom bungalow was selling for N15 million.

I did not have that kind of money then and so I decided to go through with a mortgage. Just this year, I returned to the same estate for the same size-house. Guess what, the price of that house has gone up to N20 million, some up to N25 million, depending on the level or standard of finishing,” Anuoluwa said.

“It seems to me that most Nigerians, especially those of us that are civil servants, won’t be able to afford a home even after retirement with all these high prices because from iron rods to cement to paint, everything is beyond us now and we want the government to intervene,” he said.

Just a couple of weeks ago, the price of cement jumped again from where it had moderated at N7,500 per 50kg back to N8,500 depending on the brand and location. This is the fourth time the price of the commodity has risen this year. Indeed, from January to date, the price of the commodity has gone up by nearly 100 percent from N4,500 at the beginning of the year.

“The immediate impact of these price increases is that project timelines are disrupted, causing safety concerns as contractors with depraved minds are under pressure to cut corners,” Sebastine Ovie, an estate manager, said.

Ovie mentioned monopoly, high exchange rate energy cost as major causes of the frequent price hike. He explained that there are only three major producers of cement in Nigeria. These are Dangote, BUA and Lafarge who, he said, control about 95 percent of cement production.

Besides Cement, other building materials’ prices have also gone up. A recent BusinessDay market survey shows that the price of an iron rod or reinforcement, which gives buildings structural stability and integrity, has risen from N220,000 in 2020 to N265,000 per ton in 2021, then N475,000 in 2022 to N1.2 million in 2024.

Prices of cement blocks have also surged as nine-inch blocks, which sold for N180 in 2019, stayed steady, then rose to N220 in 2021, N340 in 2022, and has now reached N700 in 2024, while the price of six-inch blocks has climbed from N160 in 2019 to N510 Naira today.

Steel doors and other finishes are equally affected. A steel entrance door, which cost N150,000 in 2019, is sells for over N460,000. The cost of kitchen cabinets and carcasses has doubled or tripled in some cases. Similarly, a kitchen carcass board, once sold for N15,500, now sells for N36,300 while a kitchen door has jumped from N11,000 to N26,000.