Fashola got bad news for greedy Nigerian landlords but…

Power, works and housing minister Babatunde Raji Fashola may have set himself on a collision course with greedy Nigerian landlords.

Here’s what Fashola said during his first meeting with the Nigerian media in Abuja:

The way we collect rent is something that must change. If we are collecting two years rent in advance from a salary that is going to be earned in arrears monthly, there’s an accounting mismatch.

This is something many of us have experienced, you pay two years rent in advance money you haven’t earned. Something is distorted somewhere in our accounting model. We must all resolve, property owners alike, that maybe if we changed the way we collected rent alone many houses that are unoccupied, will be occupied.

I am inclined to think that if we just change the payment system for housing we will accommodate a significant number of people.

If salaries are paid in arrears, rent should be paid in arrears. A more rigorous enforcement system for eviction would then be worked out for anyone in default.

A major reason housing is expensive in Nigeria, especially in Lagos, is the insistence of landlords on collecting more than a year’s rent.

The dubious “agreement and commission” fees also seem ridiculous as they are sometimes more than the rent itself.

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While Fashola was governor of Lagos State, he enacted a law mandating landlords to collect the maximum of a year’s rent. But the law applied only to Lagos Mainland where most of the state’s poor live.

Of course, the law is history now as almost no one, we’re told, follows it.

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