10/10/2025
The Dark Political Economy of Calabar Rent: Is time to come home
There is something profoundly unsettling about the rental economy in Calabar. In a city largely inhabited by civil servants, rent has become an act of punishment rather than an exchange of value. A one-bedroom apartment now costs between ₦800,000 and ₦1 million per year. And this is a state where the minimum wage is still oscillating between #30,000 and #70,000 a month.
The arithmetic is merciless: a worker’s entire annual salary barely covers a year’s rent. This is not an economic accident. It is a symptom of a dark political economy—a system that thrives on inequality, silence, and the slow suffocation of the working class. It is a system that inadvertently breeds un-intentional and reluctant thieves!
Debt as Housing Policy
For the average civil servant in Calabar, home ownership is a dream deferred; rent payment is a nightmare renewed every twelve months. The rental calculus is cruel.
To pay ₦800,000 when you earn ₦840,000 a year means dedicating your entire income to shelter—before transport, food, school fees, or electricity. The rent is often paid upfront, forcing workers into loans from banks, cooperatives, and salary advances. Today, many civil servants are more often in the banks, negotiating one overdraft/loan or the other than being in their offices. The story has it that, there is even a civil servant who goes by the name Mr Overdraft because of his overdrafting frequency!
This turns housing into a debt trap, not a human right. Civil servants spend the year repaying the loan they took to pay last year’s rent, only to borrow again for the next. What should be an annual transaction has become a permanent economic captivity and agony. Of course, delayed payment of rent may elicit Court injunction or traditional injunction depending on the religious status of your landlord!
After rent, survival becomes a second problem. Parents skip meals. Children’s education is compromised. Health suffers. No thanks to the herbal concoction called "agbo", the name of my aboriginal tribe. The human spirit bends under the arithmetic of despair.
A Market Fueled by Greed and Neglect
So, how did Calabar, a once-affordable and serene city, become this expensive? More expensive than Uyo? More expensive than PH? In fact, Abakiliki is not our mate; na small pikin for rent! The answer lies in the politics of property and the economics of neglect.
Landlords and agents, emboldened by the absence of regulation, have formed a silent cartel. Agents push up prices to earn higher commissions. Landlords treat rent as a speculative asset, pe***ng their annual increases not to reality, but to the chaos of national inflation.
This has created a bubble economy detached from local incomes—a system where the rent is set not by what people earn, but by what landlords in connivance with agents want. And in the absence of rent control, greed becomes another diabolical policy.
The Hypocrisy of “Development”
Government officials love to speak of “development” — new roads, new estates, and grand tourism slogans. Good! Yet, development that excludes the people who keep the government running is nothing but hypocrisy. Development that emasculates the people is simply leprous.
Cross River cannot become a socio-economic hub if its civil servants, teachers, and healthcare workers cannot afford to live decently. The city is gradually becoming one where comfort is for the rich, and debt is for the loyal.
The irony is painful.A state that prides itself on hospitality is now inhospitable to its own workers.
The Urgent Need for Intervention
This crisis will not fix itself. The government must choose whether to remain a silent spectator or become a defender of its people by extending the Era of Sweetness to civil servants in particular and residents in general. The People first governor, I greet you!
The way forward:
Create a Rent Control Board:
A statutory agency should regulate yearly rent increments and license agents to stop speculative practices.
Build Affordable Housing:
Civil servant housing estates and rent-to-own schemes can cut costs and restore hope.
Review Housing Allowances: Wages and allowances must reflect the current rental reality — not the illusion of a stable economy.
In sum, indulge me to remember Abraham Maslow. Oh! Maslow, home has become a luxury close to the apex of your triangle, no longer at the base. A basic need has become a status symbol! Wherever you are, I know you're weeping if dead men do cry!
However, the dark political economy of Calabar rent is more than an economic issue — it is a moral question. A city that cannot house its workers is a city in crisis. A city in ruin!
If this trajectory continues, Calabar may become a place where only politicians and landlords thrive, while the very people who keep the system alive are trapped in debt and despair.
Real development begins when dignity returns to labour. Until then, Calabar will remain a city where survival costs too much — and home has become a luxury. A deadly slap on Maslow's postulations!
IDAKA IDAKA is a University Don and a Public affairs commentator.
