Youth Group Blasts Lagos Deputy Governor Hamzat Over ‘Live With Parents’ Advice, Demands Jakande-Style Housing | Sahara Reporters

YRC said Hamzat had offered no concrete government programme to make decent housing affordable for young workers, arguing that the housing crisis was a question of political priorities rather than resources.

The Youth Rights Campaign (YRC) has criticised Lagos State Deputy Governor and All Progressives Congress (APC) 2027 governorship candidate, Obafemi Hamzat, over his advice to young workers to delay getting their own homes, live with parents or relatives, and keep rent within 40 percent of their income.

In a statement issued on Sunday and signed by its National Coordinator, Michael Adaramoye Lenin, and National Secretary, Francis Nwapa, the group described the remarks as insensitive amid rising housing, food and transportation costs.

YRC said Hamzat had offered no concrete government programme to make decent housing affordable for young workers, arguing that the housing crisis was a question of political priorities rather than resources.

“This is not a resource problem. It is a problem of political will and class priorities,” the group said.

The organisation contrasted the current situation with the mass housing programmes of former Lagos governor Lateef Jakande, which it said produced low-cost estates in areas including Ijaiye, Amuwo-Odofin, Ipaja, Abesan, Iponri, Dolphin and Surulere.

“Obafemi Hamzat is a product of the very Lagos that the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN), under Governor Lateef Kayode Jakande, built for working people between 1979 and 1983,” YRC said.

The group also criticised Hamzat’s comments about building a savings culture, arguing that many young workers struggle to meet basic expenses.

“Hamzat’s talk of ‘building savings culture’ and ‘starting from the average’ is an insult to a generation whose earning power has been deliberately hollowed out by the same government he has served in for over a decade,” it said.

YRC further accused successive Lagos administrations of failing to replicate Jakande’s housing programme, while alleging that demolitions and evictions had displaced residents of several waterfront and low-income communities.

“This is the real housing policy of the APC in Lagos: not Jakande’s estates for workers, but the systematic clearing of the poor from valuable land so it can be redeveloped as luxury waterfront property for the rich,” the group alleged.

It also rejected the suggestion that young Nigerians should rely on living with their parents as a long-term solution to the housing crisis.

“YRC rejects entirely the framing that young Nigerians should see living indefinitely in their parents’ homes as a reasonable ‘cultural’ solution to a policy failure engineered by the same political class lecturing them,” it said.

The group demanded massive public investment in affordable housing for workers and young people, an end to forced evictions and demolitions in waterfront and working-class communities, and disclosure of the cost of housing and other benefits provided to Lagos political office holders.

YRC also called on workers, students and young people to reject the APC in the 2027 elections and support what it described as “a working people’s political alternative.”

“Obafemi Hamzat’s remarks are not an isolated gaffe. They are the authentic voice of a political tradition that has governed Lagos for a generation without ever again attempting what Jakande achieved with far less,” the group said.

“Housing is a right, not a privilege of political office. Vote out the APC. Organize for a working people’s alternative.”