A woman I know, a teacher who rents in one of the older blocks behind Abraham Adesanya, called me the morning after she saw the headline. She wanted to know if it was true that landlords would no longer be able to collect two years rent upfront. I told her the bill had passed second reading in the House of Assembly and was now before the Housing Committee. She went quiet for a moment and then asked the right question: when does it actually take effect?
The Lagos State Tenancy and Recovery of Premises Bill 2025 does what it says on the surface. New tenants cannot be asked for more than one year upfront, existing tenants are capped at three months advance, and agency fees have a formal ceiling. Agents who collect money and vanish face fines up to one million naira, prison terms up to two years, or both.
These are good provisions and on paper they address almost everything I have watched tenants lose money over in this corridor. The problem is not what the bill says. The problem is what happens between a law passing in Alausa and a landlord in Ajah who has collected two years rent since 2003.
LASRERA, the Lagos State Real Estate Regulatory Authority, already exists and has existed for years. It already has the mandate to register and discipline agents operating in Lagos. Ask any agent operating in the Ajah corridor whether their registration is current and watch what happens to their expression. The registration requirement in this bill is a restatement of something that has not been enforced.
The critics of this bill have identified the actual problem, which is enforcement in informal tenancy situations. Most tenancies in the Ajah corridor are not documented in ways this bill can reach. There is no written agreement, no receipt in a format a court would recognise, and no witness who will come forward. The bill was built for the formal rental market, and the people who need it most are operating in the informal one.
The detail that surprised me in the bill was the seven-day mandatory notice requirement before a landlord can begin possession recovery. Seven days is not much time for a tenant who has nowhere to go, but it is more than some landlords currently give. What the bill does not address is what happens when the landlord ignores the notice requirement and changes the locks anyway. That is the self-help eviction the bill claims to ban, and it happens in this area regularly.
The one million naira fine for agents who collect and disappear sounds significant until you remember that these agents are not easy to locate. They operate through WhatsApp numbers, unregistered offices, and word-of-mouth referrals. A fine only works if you can find the person to charge.
I spoke to a woman in an estate off Lekki-Epe last month who paid an agent N180,000 in fees and collected the key. The next day she got a call saying the apartment had been given to someone else. The agent’s phone was switched off by evening. Under the new bill, that agent faces up to two years in prison.
I do not want to dismiss this bill entirely because it will change some things for some people. Tenants in formal estate developments, with written tenancy agreements and registered landlords, will have legal standing they did not have before. If a developer or a corporate landlord tries to demand two years upfront from a documented tenant, that tenant now has something to point to.
The people most likely to benefit from this bill are also the people who were already in the stronger negotiating position. A tenant with a written agreement, a clear address, and knowledge that the law has changed can use this bill. A tenant who moved in on a verbal arrangement, paid cash, has no receipt, and does not know the bill exists cannot.
Celebrate the bill if it passes into law, because the provisions are genuinely better than what exists now. But do not celebrate as though the problem is solved. The enforcement gap in informal rental arrangements is not addressed by anything in this bill, and that gap is where most Ajah tenants actually live.
Lukmon Isiaq is a Lagos-based property researcher and street-level writer who has spent years studying the Ajah corridor the way most people never bother: on foot, in compounds, and in conversation with landlords, tenants, caretakers, and estate agents who operate where the listings end and the real story begins.
He is not a property developer. He is not a real estate marketer. He is the person you call before you sign anything. The one who has personally walked flood-prone streets after October rain, argued with agents over undisclosed charges, and documented how the Lagos housing market actually works for ordinary Nigerians trying to make serious decisions with serious money.
His writing on Abraham Adesanya Estate Lekki Ajah covers the Ajah corridor, Ikota Villa, Ajao Estate, Ogudu GRA, and the wider Lekki property market with one consistent standard: the honest version, not the brochure version.
He understands the gap between what a listing promises and what a tenant discovers on their first rainy season.
