Expert insights on real estate development, legal practice, industry reform, and personal reflections from years of experience across three continents.
My long experience in both America and Nigeria has given me a rare vantage point to see why real estate thrives in one place and struggles in the other. Four things shape everything: supervision, regulation, tenancy culture, and the role of government.
When I look at Abuja's skyline, I do not just see impressive buildings — I see many projects that are not commercially viable, often fueled by illicit money that distorts the true economics of the market. Seven out of ten people who enter real estate without deep understanding end up losing money.
My dealings with contractors in Nigeria have left me frustrated — incompetence, dishonesty, cost overruns, abandoned work. When I remember how contractors operate in the U.S., I see clearly how much protection a regulated system gives to developers and buyers.
I admire the centralized, transparent way the American system handles permits, registration, and property records. In Nigeria, I often feel like I am operating in a fog — fragmented, opaque, and vulnerable to fraud. A unified digital property database would change everything.
I advocate firmly for one central regulatory body to oversee land administration and real estate, streamlined and digitized processes, enforceable building codes, and a specialized tenancy tribunal — instead of the confusing maze of overlapping agencies that frustrate serious investors.
My experience with tenancy in Nigeria has been particularly painful; I know what it is to watch a property tied down for years by a delinquent tenant while legal processes drag on and costs pile up.
Government in Nigeria is both overinvolved and under-involved in all the wrong places — interfering excessively in land ownership while failing to provide the basic coordination and transparency a healthy real estate market demands. El‑Rufai's FCT land revocations showed what is possible.
Nigeria's real estate sector is entering a pivotal phase — driven by rapid urbanization and rising demand, yet held back by structural gaps in financing, regulation, and execution. As a developer with experience across international and Nigerian markets, I share what it will take to unlock the sector's full potential.
I do not speak as someone who has always gotten it right; I have taken serious financial hits in the U.S., Nigeria, and the U.K., and I openly acknowledge that inexperience, poor due diligence, and trusting the wrong people have cost me dearly. Yet I now see those losses as part of my education — what matters is not avoiding every blow but learning fast enough not to repeat the same mistakes.