Up Tinubu?
Tinubu wants to give you a slice of Lekki for just ₦3,000
Good morning, Big Brains. You probably didn’t wake up thinking you’d become a homeowner today, but if you read today’s edition of the newsletter and think Tinubu’s idea is a good one, today might be your lucky day.
- Margaret
Word count: ~ 1,000
Reading time ~ 5 mins
Let’s get into today’s edition:
Tinubu wants to give you a slice of Lekki for just ₦3,000
Imo state is putting schools on lockdown after a mysterious outbreak
The Big Deal
Tinubu wants to give you a slice of Lekki for just ₦3,000
President Tinubu is many things, but a pessimist is not one of them. If you’re slowly giving up on your 2025 goals, you might want to pump up your energy again because the president still has plans to help you make Mama proud.
You usually cannot get a plot of land in Lekki for ₦3,000 without holding a gun, but anything is possible under this regime. As you probably already know, our president has insisted on renewing everything, especially your hope. To make that possible, he launched his Renewed Hope City housing projects, with an ambitious promise of making housing affordable for regular Nigerian citizens like you.
The project is still in the works, but we have an update that you might consider interesting. The Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria (FMBN) has just invested another ₦46.9 billion in the Renewed Hope City dream, splitting it between Karsana in Abuja and Ibeju Lekki in Lagos. While ₦19.9 billion will be headed to Karsana, ₦27 billion will go to Lekki, where 1,500 housing units will be built.
According to the FMBN Managing Director, this fund is supposed to bridge Nigeria’s housing gap and give everyday people a shot at real homeownership. To show how inclusive they plan to make home ownership, the newly appointed chairman of the bank, Dr Nasir Gawuna, added that anyone above 18 who earns more than ₦3,000 is technically eligible to contribute to the mortgage system.
Why is this a big deal?
Nigeria has a serious housing deficit problem. In 2023, the federal government said the country needed about 28 million more houses to meet demand and that it would take roughly ₦21 trillion to make that happen. The low purchasing power of Nigerians is one reason this problem still exists in 2025, so imagine our excitement when the president branded his housing project as affordable. Turns out we have different definitions of affordability. One-bedroom apartments in the Renewed Hope City cost between ₦8 million and ₦22 million.
The World Bank’s Development Update on Nigeria says 129 million people live below the poverty line and can’t afford the hope our president is selling, but your favourite T probably thinks they’re not being hopeful enough. The FMBN and its mortgage plans might claim their funding will smooth this out; we’re not exactly buying that dream either.
Those housing units come with mortgage plans as flexible as 30 years, but they still exclude the people they are supposed to serve. The World Bank defines its poverty line as living below $2.15 per day, which would amount to living below ₦99,000 monthly. Those people would realistically spend more than 10 years of their lives paying for the cheapest unit in Renewed Hope City.
Perhaps we'd be more impressed if it were branded as a way for middle-class Nigerians, who already have a roof over their heads, to enjoy pretty views from Lekki, not a saving grace for poor Nigerians.
Don’t take our word for it, though. If Renewed Hope City and the FMBN’s mortgage offering sound like your vibe, you can find out how to become a homeowner here.
Imo state is putting schools on lockdown after a mysterious outbreak
This year’s Children’s Day wasn’t a day of celebration for the kids in the Mbutu Community of Imo State; it was a day to mourn six students killed by an unknown disease in less than one week.
To prevent the disease from spreading further and from claiming more lives, every nursery, primary, and secondary school in Mbutu has been shut down for seven days.
Chairman of the Aboh Mbaise Local Government Area, Iheukwumere Henry Alaribe, has confirmed the tragic outbreak, adding that all the victims were children between the ages of one and six. In a message shared with the Mbutu Mbaise Peoples Assembly (MMPA), he explained that the school closures are a precautionary move to protect the remaining children.
Health authorities, including the World Health Organisation (WHO), the Department of Disease Prevention and Control in the Imo State Ministry of Health, and local health workers, are now on the ground, trying to figure out what’s behind the strange illness and how to stop it.
Is the government doing anything about the outbreak?
The local government says they’re working closely with the state and other agencies to contain the outbreak and protect the community. So far, we don’t have updates about how long it will take to find a name for this dangerous disease and make its vaccine available in Mbutu.
Your next big read
→Children’s Day 2025: The Kids Are Not Alright: It’s Children’s Day in Nigeria today, so you’ll likely hear performative speeches from public officials on the value and importance of children to the country. But they’ll not tell you that Nigeria is working overtime to snuff the life out of them.
→I Believed Everything Nollywood Told Me About Career Women Until I Became One: Nneka* reflects on growing up believing what Nollywood told her was the experiences of women who chose to pursue corporate careers and how she started working, and adulthood and life slowly peeled those layers of fiction away.
The Big Picks
NASS Receives Tinubu’s Request For $21.5bn Loan, ₦758bn Pension Bond: The National Assembly has received a formal request from President Bola Tinubu seeking approval for a $21.5 billion external loan and a ₦758 billion domestic bond to settle outstanding pension liabilities.
‘FG Clears Over 200,000 Unprocessed Passport Backlogs, ₦28 billion Legacy Debt’, Says Tunji-Ojo: Minister of Interior, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, says more than 200,000 unprocessed passport application backlogs have been cleared since he assumed office at the Ministry of Interior.
This Week’s Big Question
“What's your prediction for the 2027 presidential election?”
David’s response - “I hate to admit it, but Tinubu will win again.”
You can also share your response here, and if it’s as interesting as David’s, we’ll feature it in the next edition.
Let’s settle this thing…
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Play catch up
It’s giving selective amnesia
Trusting Nigerian lawmakers is just as good as trusting Rihanna to drop new music (with actual lyrics); you’ll end up disappointed. If you’re wondering what they’ve done this time, the more realistic question is “What haven’t they done?”