Millions held down in city centres as absence of infrastructure limits rural drift

Many Nigerians, especially those in the mid-income bracket, are still held down in congested city centres across the country against their desire to move to sparsely populated satellite towns due to absence of infrastructure in those towns, BusinessDay investigations show.

For the same reason, a good number of real estate investments and homeownership plans are dying and abandoned in the suburbs, especially in Lagos and Abuja. The country has huge infrastructure deficits and a significant proportion of this is in roads, especially federal highways, which link cities to towns and villages on the one hand, and the country to neighbouring countries on the other.

Our investigations also show that many residents who were lured by lower prices to buy properties in areas far away from the city centres are regretting tying down their money in those areas. Some are selling off the properties, while those who have even completed building their houses are not moving in due to accessibility problems.

In Lagos, while the satellite areas such as Badagry, Epe, Agbara, Imota and Ikorodu, among others, provide opportunity for the built industry with landed property and rents being less, compared with the city centres, the areas, however, remain unattractive to millions of residents who see no incentives to migrate.

The expansion of the Lagos-Badagry Expressway by the Lagos State government raised investment and homeownership interest to a level where many people committed their life-savings to buying properties in that axis. Today, the road project seems to have been abandoned, while over 60 percent of the road has collapsed, trapping billions of naira in investments in that axis.

Kehinde Adebayo, an insurance broker, told BusinesDay that he remained a tenant where he lives at the moment two years after building his own house, explaining that he was one of those who saw the need to take advantage of the reconstruction and expansion of the expressway.

Sam Abang, a journalist in Abuja, painted a frustrating picture of a property he acquired in Agbara with the hope that the road expansion project would run its course. “I was encouraged to buy a property in Agbara, off the Lagos-Badagry Expressway in 2009 with the hope that the road expansion project started by the Lagos State government would run its course. I sold the property last year because I saw no incentive to develop it. The road project which was the motivation seems to be an abandoned project,” said Abang.

He explained that absence of infrastructure in satellite areas of the state means that rather than people from the city moving to those areas, it is now the people who are already living there that continue to migrate to the congested city centres, notwithstanding clogged roads and ports.

A staff of one of the agencies of Lagos State, who craved anonymity, said he had allocation at Green Gate Estate, a state government scheme in Ikorodu, but he had been unable to access the property because there had been no development of any kind by the government.

“I got the allocation in 2013, but nothing has happened there since then. No access road, no electricity, and no water. How do you go and live there with your family even if you build. We have been waiting, hoping that, someday, the area would become liveable,” said the staff.

In Abuja, the story is not different, and Benjamin Asogwa, a civil servant and father of four, living in the city centre where he pays prime rent in a tight accommodation, says his case goes beyond just being trapped where he lives. “I wanted to get out of the city centre for two reasons. My meagre pay cannot support the high rent paid here.

“Again, I needed a bigger accommodation for my growing family and so, I went to the suburb and bought a plot of land along with many other people in my circumstance. We had expected that in a couple of years, development would reach there, but till date, no roads, water or electricity. To add to my woes, that piece of land has been sold to another buyer by the land owner,” Asogwa lamented.