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Above the water Numerous continents of Lagos, where most of the city’s 20 million people live in slums, luxury real estate developers on Banana Island sell millions of dollars in luxury flats made of gold, black and cream.
“What we sell is quality,” said Sijibomi Ogundel, the 42-year-old CEO of real estate developer and construction company Sujimoto, shaking hands around an apartment building in Giuliano di Medici. Zaha Hadid pointed to the main bathtub in the main bathroom: “This design is one of the most expensive in the world.”
Ogundele is part of the growth of luxury goods in Africa’s largest city, although Nigeria’s vast economy has experienced high inflation, slow growth and high unemployment.
The forces in Nigeria are ultra-rich, looking for money to park somewhere in the economy, where the central bank has devalued more than a third of the naira against the dollar in the past year.
“We have a niche market, a one-hundred-percent market,” Ogundel said. “There aren’t many, their number isn’t increasing. . .[but] these people, despite the bad economy, will buy it. “
The view from Giuliano’s balcony – a pair of empty lots filled with building materials and a pair of lazy bulls with large horns – is a view of more apartment blocks that Sujimoto is building.
Lucrezia, a 14-storey luxury building under construction, will start at 1.9 million euros, with private cinema Imax. Nearby is Leonardo, a 25-storey complex with 22 swimming pools and an “indoor virtual golf bar”.
“In Covid’s time, people. . . they didn’t spend money because they didn’t travel, no shopping, nothing, so I think they felt rich, ”said Andrea Geday, CEO of El-Alan, a 25-story 4-story Bourdillon development developer, West Africa’s tallest housing building. devaluation was a factor because the funds had to be consolidated somewhere and the only way was to buy the property. ”
From the 21st floor of Bourdillon on the 4th floor of Geday is clear the rise of the Ikoyi building, arguably the richest and most exclusive neighborhood in Nigeria.
Not only does it climb half a dozen towers, it also includes one next door, but there are dozens of smaller projects: buildings with four four-story homes or a dozen houses in the town to cut biscuits.
The luxury tower responds to the ultra-wealthy Nigerians, who believe Knight Frank is about 200,000 or 300,000 because the money is not the object and the second homes they own are in London, Dubai, New York or Miami.
Some analysts question who will live in these new properties, especially since there are a large number of 30- or 40-percent-capacity housing units in the Lekki and Ikoyi districts.
The answer is that it may not matter at all, considering how useful real estate is as a laundry service for dirty money, said Timothy Nubi, a professor of real estate management at Lagos University.
“There’s a school of thought that’s a way to save money for people who can’t afford to go abroad or for people who can’t afford to put money in the bank – they just put their money into ownership.” . . and I hope to be able to sell it a few years later, ”Nubi said.
“It’s crazy. You drive around Ikoyi and you will see the left side of a street [with buildings] which are empty “.
This week, the head of Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Abdulrasheed Bawa, told Channels TV that the money laundering was done “from 90% to 100%” through real estate.
At Lucrezia’s sales office, Ogundel said he has heard about money laundering as part of a Nigerian real estate game, but has never experienced it himself. “And there’s no money to steal right now!” he said, jokingly, about the dire state of the economy.
Given the large differences in wealth and opportunities in Lagos and Nigeria, Nubi said the government should focus on investments in affordable housing with a deficit of about 2.5 million units and two-thirds of the population living in slums. , According to UN estimates. “We have this problem of mismatch in the Nigerian real estate market,” he said. “What comes to market is not what people need.”
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