For a long time, Nigeria’s great fortunes were tied to oil blocs, import licences or government contracts. Today, a growing share is being written into property deeds. The country’s housing shortage runs into the tens of millions of units, yet demand at the middle and upper ends of the market has rarely been stronger. As inflation bites and the currency wobbles, land and brick have become a preferred store of value for the country’s professionals, diaspora and old money alike.
In the middle of this shift is a generation of developers who look less like old-school landlords and more like fast-moving founders: brand-conscious, social-media fluent, and comfortable talking about valuation, pipeline and product as much as they talk about foundations and concrete.
Among them: Adetola “Nola” Nola of Veritasi Homes, Sijibomi Ogundele of Sujimoto, Adebola Sheidu of Brains and Hammers, Richard Nyong of Lekki Gardens, Olawale Ayilara of LandWey, Barka Umaru Mshelia of Mshel Homes, Emmanuel Udechukwu of Roxbury Homes and Kennedy Okonkwo of Nedcomoaks Limited.
They are not the only ones. But together, they offer a clear window into how Nigeria’s new real estate money is being made.
The new dealmakers of Lagos
For many young Nigerians, the real estate journey starts with frustration: rising rent, endless stories of land disputes, and a landlord who decides to “use the house for family” just when you’ve settled in. That trust gap is where a new crop of developers has built their advantage.
Adetola Nola, the founder of Veritasi Homes, comes from that world. Still in his thirties, he has turned Veritasi into a recognisable name in mid- to upper-income estates around Lagos. The company’s sales pitch is simple enough: curated locations, clean documentation and payment plans that don’t require a seven-figure salary to get started.
What sets Veritasi apart is the way it sells. The billboards and glossy brochures are still there, but a lot of the heavy lifting happens online. Instagram lives, webinars, drone tours, animated breakdowns of payment plans — the entire funnel looks closer to a fintech campaign than a traditional property push. The message is intentional: this isn’t the old chaos of “omo onile”; this is real estate packaged like a consumer product.
A few kilometres away on the same corridor, LandWey has followed a different path to the same goal. Founded by Olawale Ayilara in his late twenties, LandWey has become one of the most visible developers on the Lekki–Epe stretch. The company’s estates are marketed as self-contained communities: uniform architecture, controlled access, branded streetscapes and a promise that if you buy early, you’ll watch your investment climb as the area develops.
Ayilara’s background is not that of a legacy landlord. He built LandWey the way a young operator would build any growth company — aggressive marketing, a strong sales culture and a focus on repeatable formats. The result is a pipeline of estates that all feel like part of a single, recognisable brand.
On another part of the island, Nedcomoaks and its founder, Kennedy Okonkwo, have carved out their own lane with the Victoria Crest series of estates. Okonkwo’s story has become part of industry lore: from struggling tenant to landlord, then to large-scale developer. His estates target the city’s aspirational middle class — bankers, tech workers, mid-level executives — people who may not afford Ikoyi but want more than a bare-bones block of flats.
Nedcomoaks’ developments tend to be dense, uniform and designed to be delivered at scale. They are not shy about the “mass affluent” positioning: neat streets, small recreational pockets, perimeter walls, and enough finishing to feel premium without breaking into ultra-luxury territory. The repeatability of the product is the business model.
These Lagos players share a common instinct: they treat homebuyers the way a software company treats users — segment them, target them, retain them, and sell to them again.
When luxury becomes a thesis
Sijibomi “Sujimoto” Ogundele has built a brand that lives almost as loudly as his projects. Sujimoto Construction is squarely focused on high-end and ultra-luxury developments in Lagos’ most expensive enclaves: Ikoyi, Banana Island, prime stretches of Victoria Island. These are not just costly apartments; they are marketed as lifestyle statements.
The marketing material is deliberate: Italian marble, designer kitchens, private elevators, concierge services, skyline views. But beneath the slick visuals is a clear investment thesis. In a city where reliable power, water and security are scarce, an apartment in a well-managed, high-end building becomes more than a place to live. It functions as a hedge against inflation, a status symbol, and a potential dollar-earning rental asset if leased to multinationals or high-net-worth tenants.
Ogundele himself is central to the story. He tells it often: modest beginnings, hustle, reinvention, then a leap into luxury real estate. For a younger generation of entrepreneurs, he represents the idea that you don’t have to inherit land to control it — you can structure deals, build a team and create something that competes with any global capital city on price per square metre.
In a country where wealth has often been opaque, the visibility of Sujimoto’s towers signals something different: luxury as a product that can be scrutinised, benchmarked and compared globally.
Scale builders and city shapers
In Abuja and beyond, developers have been working with a different template: less flash, more scale.
Brains and Hammers, co-founded and chaired by Adebola Sheidu, has become a reference point for large estates and mixed-use projects. From its base in the capital, the company has delivered entire communities — rows of similar homes, internal roads, shopping areas, sometimes hospitality assets — aimed at civil servants, corporate staff and middle-income families.
The business is part urban design, part logistics. Rather than betting on a handful of trophy towers, Brains and Hammers leans into volume: acquire large tracts of land, design a repeatable product, work closely with banks and mortgage providers, and keep building. For buyers, the appeal is predictable pricing and an ecosystem — schools, clinics, small retail — within a manageable commute of the city centre.
Back in Lagos, Lekki Gardens plays a similar role in the private sector-driven mass market. Founded by Richard Nyong, the company burst onto the scene selling off-plan units at prices that undercut many competitors. Entire estates sold out while still on the drawing board, helped by a sales machine that targeted professionals hungry for a first step on the property ladder.
The company has had to navigate its share of turbulence and scrutiny over the years, including safety and regulatory pressures. That experience seems to have reshaped its stance: the public-facing story now leans more heavily on compliance, process and institutional discipline. Nyong, once seen primarily as a risk-taker, now talks more like a long-term operator.
What Brains and Hammers and Lekki Gardens share is a cold understanding of numbers. They are not chasing glamour; they are chasing throughput. Land banks, cost control, standardised designs, and steady sales combine to create balance-sheet wealth. The model is less about one blockbuster project and more about delivering dozens of similar ones over time.
The regional specialists
Not every story is written in Lagos or Abuja.
In the South-East, Roxbury Homes, founded by Emmanuel Udechukwu, has spent the last few years betting on a quieter transformation. Roxbury’s projects blend residential and leisure elements — estates with clear design language, water features, and recreational spaces — aimed at an emerging class of eastern professionals and diaspora Nigerians who want something more than a village mansion but less chaotic than Lagos.
The logic is straightforward: as airports improve, universities expand and local economies diversify, cities like Awka and Onitsha gain a new professional class. Those people earn in Lagos, Abuja or abroad; they invest where their families and roots still are. With the right product, that capital can be captured and kept in the region.
In Abuja, Mshel Homes, led by architect and entrepreneur Barka Umaru Mshelia, is one of the newer names making noise. Founded only a few years ago, the company has moved quickly, assembling a portfolio of estates and branching into related sectors under the Mshel Group umbrella. Mshelia’s background in design shows in the branding and layouts; the homes are pitched as thoughtfully planned, not just stacked for density.
For both Roxbury and Mshel, the game is timing. They are planting flags in locations that feel one big road project, one government institution or one private university away from a step-change in value.
How they actually make the money
Strip away the glossy brochures and drone shots and the underlying engine looks surprisingly disciplined.
At the mid-market level, developers like Veritasi, LandWey, Lekki Gardens, Nedcomoaks, Mshel and Roxbury rely heavily on off-plan sales and structured payment plans. A buyer puts down an initial deposit, then pays over 12, 24 or 36 months. For the developer, those instalments act like relatively cheap funding. For the buyer, the benefit is leverage: by the time the unit is completed, the underlying land and property have often appreciated, on paper at least.
In the luxury bracket, Sujimoto and a handful of peers are effectively selling a thesis: that there will always be demand from corporates, diaspora and high-net-worth individuals for well-located, well-serviced apartments in Lagos’ core. That expectation underpins their pricing. If it holds, investors who buy early and hold can enjoy both prestige and returns.
Brains and Hammers, operating more in the mass- to mid-market in Abuja and other cities, leans into scale. Margins per unit might be thinner than in Ikoyi, but spreading fixed costs — design, permitting, procurement — over hundreds or thousands of homes can be very profitable if execution is tight.
Across all of them, the real skill is less about picking tiles and more about managing risk: land acquisition, regulatory approvals, community relations, construction timelines, interest rate exposure, and the ever-present challenge of delivering what was promised.
Trust, scars and staying power
Real estate in Nigeria is not a clean business. Buyers remember collapsed buildings, abandoned projects, and developers who vanished once the last cheque cleared. Government agencies have become more vocal, the press more attentive, and social media less forgiving.
That scrutiny has forced the new generation of developers to think harder about reputation. Many invest heavily in their public image — speaking engagements, philanthropy, scholarships, visible CSR projects — not just out of goodwill but as a kind of insurance. A developer who is present in the community and in the media is harder to write off as a fly-by-night operator.
Even so, the industry still has scars, and the margin for error is shrinking. Delays, poor finishing or sloppy facility management can wipe out years of carefully built goodwill overnight. The players who last will likely be those who treat post-delivery management, governance and transparency as core parts of the business, not annoying extras.
A gold rush with a longer horizon
Nigeria has seen property booms before. Some were driven by oil windfalls, others by politics or currency plays. What’s different about the current moment is that it sits on a broader, more durable foundation: relentless urbanisation, a young population, and a deepening pool of local and diaspora capital looking for somewhere tangible to sit.
Developers like Nola, Ogundele, Sheidu, Nyong, Ayilara, Mshelia, Udechukwu and Okonkwo are not building in a vacuum. They are responding to a country where city populations keep climbing, infrastructure projects are slowly redrawing commuting patterns, and households are desperate to escape the uncertainty of renting.
Their fortunes are tied to how well they read that demand — and how honestly they respond to it. If they get it right, the real estate sector will continue to mint young millionaires, not just in boardrooms, but among early investors and homeowners whose assets quietly compound over time.
This group is only a slice of the story. All over the country, other young and relatively young entrepreneurs are building estates, aggregating land, structuring joint ventures and professionalising what used to be a fragmented, informal trade. The list is not exhaustive; it could not be, because the landscape is still shifting.
What is clear is that Nigeria’s next great fortunes are just as likely to be signed in site offices and showrooms as in oil company boardrooms. The new gold rush is above ground, not below it — measured in survey plans, stackable floor plans and a skyline that refuses to stop rising.
Credit: billionaires.africa
