Reps back new real estate regulator as Speaker warns Nigeria faces a crisis of trust

The House of Representatives has moved to create a National Real Estate Regulatory Authority, opening a stakeholder conference in Abuja on Monday under the theme "One Vision, One Ecosystem, One National Housing and Real Estate Plan" to test support for the proposed legislation.

Abdulmumini Jibrin, chairman of the House Committee on Housing and Habitat, said an assessment by his committee had exposed fragmented institutional responsibilities, weak regulatory oversight and inadequate consumer protection across the property value chain. He said the Federal Ministry of Housing and Urban Development does not have jurisdiction over several agencies whose work is integral to housing delivery, creating duplication of functions and gaps in supervision.

Speaker Tajudeen Abbas, delivering the keynote address, said the country's housing crisis is fundamentally a crisis of trust. "Nigeria does not lack property. Nigeria lacks enough trust in property," he said, noting that buyers cannot always confirm who owns land, developers spend years seeking approvals from offices that do not share information, and families commit savings to houses that are sold twice or never completed.

Abbas proposed that the new authority keep a verifiable national register of regulated developers, agents and projects; hold off-plan buyers' funds in protected accounts released only against verified construction milestones; and modernise title verification by linking state registries, surveys, planning status and encumbrances to a secure digital identity for each property, with states retaining constitutional authority over land. He also floated a time-limited legislative sandbox for property technology firms, subject to consumer protection, data protection and anti-money laundering rules, and said the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Central Bank of Nigeria and state governments would keep their mandates.

Housing Minister Muttaqha Rabe Darma told the conference that a July stakeholder exercise validated a shortfall of more than 50 million housing units against a population of about 240 million, with mortgage penetration below 10 per cent compared with 38 per cent in Malaysia and 40 per cent in South Korea. He endorsed the proposal but recommended that the authority be domiciled inside the housing ministry, and called for coordination with the National Housing Finance Authority and a mortgage policy still awaiting presidential consideration.

Armstrong Ume Takang, managing director of the Ministry of Finance Incorporated, said the Presidency would give the bill thorough consideration and identified its relationship with the Land Use Act, professional regulation and the risk of excessive regulatory burden as issues needing scrutiny. Jibrin said the proposal would not take over the powers of state governments or professional bodies.