Fashola, others advocate monthly payment of rent

The former Governor of Lagos State, Babatunde Fashola and operators in the built environment have called for a monthly rent payment system in Nigeria.

They made the call at the Wemabod Real Estate Outlook 2025 themed, “Real Estate Development: A Catalyst for Nigeria’s Economic Recovery,” in Lagos.

Fashola, an ex-Minister of Power, Works, and Housing, said Nigerians would see a remarkable inflationary freeze, if not a reversal when rent payments converge with monthly salary payments.

“If rents can be paid monthly when salaries are gotten you would see a (positive) change in the economy,” he stated.

In a similar vein, the Group Managing Director of Odu’a Investment Company Limited, Abdulrahman Yinusa, said the monthly rental payment method is a good one

He said, “There is a gap between employees’ ability to see money and what they want to pay. To bridge the gap, it is the employers that can help by providing a guarantee to the landlords, that when the rental money is due, the employers would deduct from the salaries and fees.

“That way, the landlords would calm down and know that their money would always come.”

Also, the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Wemabod Limited, Bashir Oladunni, canvassing his support for the monthly rent payment system, said it would enable tenants to be able to meet their housing obligations.

He said, “The government needs to put in place regulations that would also safeguard the interest of landlords. Property owners also do not have mortgages at a single interest rate. So they must have borrowed to finance the development of those assets, and for any business enterprise, you want to recoup your funds as quickly as possible to be able to develop and build more.

“It is a laudable idea. It is an institution like Wemabod that can champion such a course, looking at the kind of portfolio that we have and the fact that we are backed by six states of the federation. Furthermore, we are exploring this option as part of our strategic plan to expand our housing portfolio by 500 units over the next five years.”

In 2024, the Special Adviser to Lagos State Governor on Housing, Barakat Odunuga-Bakare, disclosed that the state’s monthly rental scheme would be enforced before the end of 2024 or early 2025.

She stated it during a press briefing of the Lagos State Real Estate Regulatory Authority in Ikeja, Lagos.

She said, “We all see what is being done in other climes, rents are collected monthly. Hence, we are looking and hoping that before the end of the year, or by early next year, we will be able to implement the policy of monthly rental. Also, the rental would be charged according to tenants’ earnings.

“The good part about it is that we would be test-running it first within the public sector since we can ascertain how much everybody is earning, and once we see that it works in the public sector, we can now push it out to the private sector.”