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New builds
Ground-up houses and small blocks in Lagos, Abuja, and Ibadan, from the soil under the plot to a roof that can take the season.
A new build is the job where the ground is still a plot, or a cleared compound, and the house or small block does not exist yet. It is a different conversation from a renovation. You are choosing the structure, the way water leaves the site, and the order of trades before anyone has a room to sleep in.
People arrive at this page with very different pieces of paper. Some have a survey plan and a sketch on a phone. Some have a full architectural set and want a builder to price it. Some have only bought a plot in a named estate and want to know what should happen before a block is cast. All of those can be a quote request. What cannot be skipped is a description of the place: Lagos, Abuja, Ibadan, or another city, and the neighbourhood.
Start with the ground, not the gate
In Lagos, shallow ground near the lagoon and on the Lekki peninsula is not the same material as a mainland estate plot in Magodo or Ikeja. Research on the Lekki barrier has described a low peninsula, with a large share of the land only a few metres above sea level, and foundation studies around Ibeju-Lekki have found sandy, compressible soils and shallow groundwater. That does not mean every Lekki plot needs the same foundation. It means a guess copied from a friend’s duplex is a poor design. Lagos rules also expect a soil investigation for taller buildings and for sites with low bearing capacity, through the building-control process that follows planning permission.
Abuja sits higher, around the plateau of the Federal Capital Territory, and the development-control conversation there asks for geotechnical information on buildings that go beyond a simple house, including cases with more than two suspended floors. Some plots meet laterite, some meet ground that needs a designed footing, and a few meet rock close enough to change the excavation. The quote should say which district the plot is in — Maitama is not Kubwa, and a Guzape infill is not a Gwarinpa estate road — because access for concrete and the planning envelope both change. Lugbe has its own page for newer houses further out. The Abuja hub holds the territory-wide rules.
Ibadan’s new houses are often on the edge of an older city: Akobo, Oluyole, Felele, Apata, Moniya, and corridors beyond Ring Road. The city is drained by the Ogunpa, the Ona, and the Ogbere. The 2011 flood, fed by a short violent storm and the Eleyele reservoir, is the reason Oyo State still treats floodplain setbacks as a building question, not a folklore story. A new build on a pretty slope above a stream still needs a direct answer: where does the water go when the drain at the bottom of the road is full?
What the build itself has to survive
Most houses in these three cities are still sandcrete-block and reinforced-concrete frames, with a pitched roof or, on some newer Abuja houses, a flat concrete deck. The National Building Code of 2006, in section 10.3.14, sets crushing-strength figures for sandcrete blocks used in load-bearing walls of two- and three-storey buildings: an average of 2.00 N/mm² across six blocks, and no individual block below 1.75 N/mm². It also says lagoon sand, if anyone proposes it, has to be washed, and that blocks should be cured and kept wet rather than stacked in the sun and used the next morning. Those sentences are worth more than a slogan about “quality blocks”. If a supplier cannot tell you how the blocks were cured, the frame above them is hoping.
Rain is the other designer. Published averages put Lagos near 1,550 millimetres a year, with June the heaviest month and a lighter August before the rain returns. A NiMet-based study of 1990–2017 daily records put the mean start of the Lagos rains in late March and a long season running toward early November. Abuja’s rainy season is commonly described as April to October, with a yearly total around 1,400 millimetres. Ibadan’s mean onset in that same study sat at the end of March, with a season of about 200 days. A new build that leaves a slab open, or a block wall uncapped, through the peak weeks will spend the next year drying out of rooms that were never supposed to be wet.
Harmattan dust is the Abuja-specific version of the same problem. NiMet outlooks through the dry months describe dust haze over the north-central region, including the capital. Fresh paint, unprotected reinforcement, and a slab poured into a dust storm are all ordinary ways to lose a week. The programme should name the dry weeks and the wet weeks instead of pretending the calendar is a European summer.
A sensible order of work
The sequence that keeps a new build honest is boring, which is the point. Agree the brief: bungalow, duplex, or a small block of flats, and whether a boys’ quarters or gate house is part of the first contract or a later one. Commission the survey and, where the height or the soil demands it, the ground investigation. Let an architect and an engineer draw what the permit authority in that state will actually accept. Obtain the planning permission before anyone celebrates a foundation. In Lagos that permission sits with the physical planning permit authority, and building control then wants a notice before work, a site board, professional supervision, and stage inspections. In the FCT, development control under the Abuja Metropolitan Management Council checks proposals against the city’s manual. In Oyo State, the lands portal points applicants at the Bureau of Physical Planning and Development Control Law of 2019 and lists drawings, a survey, and a site analysis report.
Only then does setting-out mean anything. Foundations, columns, suspended floors, block walls, the roof, and the services should be inspectable at the stage the local authority names, not buried because the client is travelling. Finishes can wait. A staircase that was cast wrong cannot.
What to send with the quote
Write the neighbourhood, the number of floors you think you want, whether the plot already has a survey, and whether anyone is pressing you to start before the rains. Photos of the plot, the access road, and any water standing on it are more useful than a mood board. Micheletti Construction Limited reviews the request. This page does not publish a naira rate, a phone number, or a photograph of someone else’s house labelled as ours.
If the house is already standing and you want to change it, the renovation and extension pages are the better fit. If you are still deciding whether the old structure should come down, read renovation or rebuild before you ask for a ground-up price.