Interlocking Constraints and Housing Quality in a Rapidly Urbanising Nigerian City: The Case of Benin City
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This paper investigates interlocking constraints and housing quality in Benin City, a rapidly urbanising African city. The research identifies constraints and opportunities for low-quality housing. A qualitative approach was employed in this study, and semi-structured interviews were used to collect data. Findings show that inadequate infrastructure service provisioning, inadequate monitoring, and inadequate planning, all of which are indicative of the government's "non- interference" policy, access to finance for the impoverished and middle class, the high cost and substandard quality of building materials, and the availability of unreliable and/or incompetent labourers amongst others are all interlocking constraints impacting the delivery of quality housing in Benin City. The delivery of quality accommodation in Benin City is adversely affected by the cumulative effect of these constraints and the informal financial constraints that operate in conjunction. This research makes a valuable contribution to the housing literature by recognising the interrelationships between these frequently overlooked obstacles in African cities. This study collectively illustrates that housing in Benin City is not solely the result of issues in a single dimension (finance, land, governance, labour, etc.), but rather the result of numerous interconnected constraints that operate in tandem, as well as daily coping mechanisms in rapidly expanding African cities.
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