Being Single Nearly Cost This Nigerian Woman Her First Apartment

The day Chika Nwafor was meant to move into her new apartment, her landlord denied her entry even though she had fulfilled all the required financial obligations. The reason for the landlord’s refusal is a well-known issue among Nigerian women renting houses: he wanted a man affiliated with Nwafor to serve as a guarantor.

“He kept on insisting, and he was asking if I had a boyfriend or a fiancée,” Nwafor tells OkayAfrica, sharing that she was a bit bewildered by her new landlord’s demands. “The funny thing is, all of this scrutiny didn’t come when I was paying. It was when I came to clean and wanted to move in that the man locked the door and said I had to bring someone to stand in for me. I eventually had to call my dad that evening. He came in late at night, they talked, and he handed the key to my father.”

In many cases, women are frozen out from renting apartments because landlords are averse to having female tenants, especially single women. The prevailing reasons range from uncertainties that women will pay rent consistently and on time to concerns about sexual promiscuity. Due to these often exaggerated and paternalistic theories, they’re frequently subjected to increased scrutiny and security checks.

Nwafor, who now lives with her sister in this two-bedroom apartment, once had to be assessed by a third party while house hunting. “The lawyer [in charge of the apartment] wasn’t around, so he told me to go to the high court and meet a friend who would scrutinize me,” she recalls. During the grilling, the lawyer’s friend asked to be put in touch with the HR personnel at Nwafor’s workplace, a request she refused, as she works as a virtual tutor with a company based outside Nigeria.

Hailing from the southeastern part of Nigeria, Nwafor has also faced tribal scrutiny during her house-hunting in Lagos, although on a far less pronounced level than the hurdles she has had to overcome for being a woman. “There was a place I got refunded for because I’m Igbo, not just that, also because I’m a single lady,” she says.

Despite the annoyance of needing to call her dad to get the keys to a place she already paid for, Nwafor says she’s found an ideal apartment, one that’s spacious, in an area where the electricity supply is well above decent, and central to key areas on the mainland and isn’t too far from the island. Location was a key consideration during house hunting, although it initially made her overlook her current place.

“A friend stayed here for a while, and he already said something about moving out before I started searching intensely,” she says. To avoid the stress of inspecting dozens of houses, sometimes to no avail, as well as bypassing Lagos agents and their exorbitant commission fees, taking over an apartment just as the former tenant is exiting is considered striking gold. Rather than simply wait for her friend to exit and take over the apartment, Nwafor had her eyes set on getting a house in Yaba, a Lagos mainland area near the edge of the Third Mainland Bridge.

“I was so insistent on wanting a place in Yaba because it was close to everywhere,” she says. “It took me two months before I realized, ‘Let me just come back here since this is an option,’ and I don’t have to pay agent fees.”

During her search, Nwafor checked houses across the mainland, inspecting some half-heartedly because “the houses looked so fine” and she felt she had to, even though they were located in places she didn’t consider ideal.

“There are beautiful houses, very spacious apartments in places that are not close to the central parts of town, because people are renovating these old houses and old houses have always been spacious, compared to new houses that are kind of small.”

In one instance, Nwafor thought she’d found a place in Yaba, except it was close to a swamp. The house was spacious, as indicated by the pre-inspection videos she’d seen, and was located in Akoka, a nexus point between three higher education institutions.

“I was so excited that I left my house around 7 a.m. just to get there on time and even be able to pay that same day,” she says. “In my mind, I had already envisioned the house I wanted; it had a wine bar and its TV console, already done. I don’t think it needed any touch-ups at that point. It was very spacious, and this is in Akoka, which is close to everywhere, so you would not expect to find a swampy area in Akoka.”

That, and several other inspection experiences, led Nwafor to take up the place previously rented by her friend. Although she was given “rules” by her landlord – “stuff like not coming in late like 4 a.m., wearing skimpy clothes, and not bringing in a lot of people” – she’s settled because the place suits her lifestyle. “I don’t leave my house unless I really have to go somewhere,” she says. “There’s electricity, it’s an estate that’s quiet, so I’m okay.”