By Opeyemi Eniola
In Lagos, a city defined by high costs, intense competition, and relentless pressure, one radio exchange has reignited an old but often uncomfortable conversation about housing. Lagos State Deputy Governor, Dr. Kadri Obafemi Hamzat, was asked a straightforward question: how does a 22-year-old earning around ₦100,000 monthly afford self-contained accommodation that now costs approximately ₦1 million per year?
His response was clear, rooted in cultural reality, and intentionally unsentimental. The core message was simple: don’t start from the top. If you are unmarried, live with parents or relatives, share accommodation, and keep housing expenses to no more than 40% of your income. The reasoning is practical, after rent, you still need resources for essentials like food, clothing, transportation, and the savings required for long-term progress. In short: begin at a manageable level, save deliberately, and move up as your financial capacity grows.
Reactions were swift and divided. Some viewed the comments as an avoidance of responsibility for a housing crisis that has made decent accommodation less of a right and more of a privilege. Others saw in the statement a rare moment of honesty from a public figure willing to say what many families already know: that progress is usually incremental, not instantaneous. Both views contain partial truth. However, the deeper value of Hamzat’s intervention is the principle he emphasized real growth rarely happens in leaps. Starting small is not defeat. It is strategy.
Lagos is a city of unmatched energy, but also unmatched pressure. Rents have risen faster than many wages, and upfront costs remain punishing. Young professionals, fresh from school or national service, often discover a market that seems designed to exclude them. In this environment, the cultural expectation of immediate independence, having an apartment, living alone, and projecting status, collides harshly with basic arithmetic. Housing should not consume such a large portion of income that it undermines other necessities and delays savings. Spending more than 40% of earnings on housing is not ambition; it is self-sabotage. It reduces financial stability, limits mobility and opportunity, and weakens long-term resilience.
The 40% guideline is not a political invention or a government directive. It reflects basic household economics advice echoed for decades by financial advisers globally. The purpose is not to discourage aspiration, but to protect the foundation needed to sustain it.
One aspect that made the statement especially resonant, and controversial, was its appeal to culture. “We are cultural people,” Hamzat said. Many Nigerian youths traditionally live with parents or extended family until marriage or until they are financially ready. Similar patterns exist in other countries and regions, including parts of Asia, Southern Europe, Turkey, and even high-cost Western cities where adult children remain longer under the family roof. Multigenerational living is not uniquely Nigerian, nor is it inherently a sign of failure. For many families, it is a rational response to economic constraints and a form of social security.
Of course, the challenge arises when support meant to be temporary becomes permanent, or when overcrowding and strained household resources make the arrangement harmful. Those realities are real and cannot be ignored. Yet acknowledging them does not invalidate the broader principle: starting modestly can be a dignified path, especially when it preserves resources while building capacity.
Starting small has long been the ordinary route to eventual independence. The graduate who shares a room, the early-career worker who stays with relatives while strengthening skills and networks, and the professional who chooses a modest one-bedroom over a flashy unit they can barely afford are not examples of diminished ambition. They are examples of delayed gratification and disciplined planning an approach that compounds over time. Many people who later own property, build businesses, or gain genuine financial breathing space began by choosing temporary trade-offs in order to secure lasting benefits. By contrast, the habit of stretching every naira to display “arrival” often leads to debt, anxiety, and stalled progress. Social media may distort expectations by presenting adulthood as if it begins with private apartments and curated lifestyles—but real life rarely cooperates.
Hamzat’s own public story also reflects progressive steps rather than sudden leaps. Trained as an engineer, with advanced studies abroad and experience in the private sector before entering public service, he has moved through stages of increasing responsibility. The model he described is familiar to many successful people: achievement usually works best when it is matched with preparation and capacity. “You don’t start from the top; you start from the average depending…” is less a slogan than a restatement of how durable progress typically happens.
That said, personal discipline alone cannot solve a structural housing shortage. Lagos—and Nigeria—needs more affordable housing supply, better mortgage options, improved land administration, and an economy that raises real incomes. Hamzat has spoken about mortgage financing, including the possibility of putting down a modest deposit and spreading the remaining balance across time. For many, a property of around ₦7 million with a 10% initial payment and reasonable instalments is far more attainable than the demand for full upfront rent on an expensive self-contained unit. Improving these systems and strengthening incomes are essential complements to any advice about starting modestly.
Critics are right to insist that government cannot hand over the housing challenge to extended families. Rising costs, currency pressures, infrastructure gaps, and population growth have intensified the problem. Young workers should not be told to simply “manage better” while systemic constraints remain unresolved. Still, it is equally unrealistic to claim that every new entrant to the workforce can, or should, immediately access independent, high-standard housing. The tension between aspiration and means is real. Ignoring either side produces harmful outcomes.
What Hamzat touched, therefore, is a cultural conversation worth continuing, especially as transitions to full independence lengthen across many societies due to longer education periods, rising housing costs, and sustained economic uncertainty. Nigeria is not an exception. Treating early-career living arrangements as a phase rather than a life sentence, and prioritizing savings and skill-building as much as status, can reduce needless pressure. Parents who can offer temporary support without enabling indefinite delay provide a valuable service. Young people who accept support with clear goals and timelines transform a cultural resource into personal capital.
“Starting small” is not a call to lower ambition. It is a call to sequence ambition wisely. Ambition without structure often collapses under its own weight. A young professional who conserves resources early gains the freedom to take calculated risks later, whether in career decisions, entrepreneurship, or eventual home ownership. The person who spends everything on appearances may discover that the appearance was purchased at a financial cost, while the deeper capacity to sustain progress never developed. This is not moralizing; it is observation drawn from many ordinary lives.
Hamzat’s remarks will not, by themselves, reduce rents or expand housing supply. They cannot replace coherent policy, private investment, and broader economic growth. But they can recalibrate expectations. In a city that prizes speed and spectacle, the quieter virtues of patience, proportionality, and incremental improvement still matter. Greatness, whether personal or collective, is rarely built by starting at the summit. More often, it is created by beginning where one actually is, conserving strength, building steadily, and refusing the expensive fiction that independence must look a particular way from day one.
The model is clear, realistic, and ultimately empowering: start average, live within current means, save the difference, invest in capacity, and expand as conditions allow. In the hard arithmetic of Lagos life, it remains one of the more reliable routes from constraint toward greater freedom. It is not the only route, and by itself it is not sufficient but it is a model worth defending against the loud insistence that anything less than immediate, visible independence is failure. For most people, most of the time, starting small is not the opposite of greatness. It is often the necessary beginning of it.
Eniola, PhD in View, is the Senior Special Assistant to the Governor of Lagos State on Basic and Secondary