As a tourist who has frequented most cities in Nigeria, I can categorically affirm that Onitsha city in Anambra has the tallest residential buildings in the whole of Nigeria. I'm not referring to government offices and corporate headquarters and offices. I referring to individual residential homes and buildings.
I think the pattern of high rise residential buildings is very common among the Igbos in general. Travel to all cities in South East, it's still same pattern.
I have been to Uyo, Port Harcourt, Benin, Warri, Ibadan, Lagos and as far as Kano, Kaduna and Sokoto. The people there are very comfortable with their bungalows and duplex houses. In Kano and Lagos where we have huge Igbo population, Igbo people still replicate the feat of building tall storey buildings. Go to Festac, Sabon Gari and Diobu in Portharcourt. You will verify all I am saying.
The following are reasons why Onitsha has the most tall residential buildings in Nigeria.
1. Wealth: Despite being battered by the harshness of the Biafran war, the Igbos still rose like a Phoenix bird. They picked up their shattered pieces and assiduously worked themselves into become the wealthiest group in Nigeria. With such stupendous wealth, the Igbos invested hugely in real estates. This saw them building such buildings all over their enclave.
2. High Taste/ Competition: Building a two storey building in Nigeria can gulp more than 35 million naira while building a bungalow will cost less than 5-10 million naira. Igbos have high taste and since they are very competitive in nature, they rather pull their resources together to build themselves imposing edifices than settling for bungalows. These buildings thus are symbols of social status in Igboland.
3. Space: Igboland is densely populated and due to the fact, there's paucity of land in the region, they prefer using up the available space they have, hence the idea of building such tall buildings. Onitsha is trammelled by paucity of landmass as a result of the Nkisi river and River Niger. This is why the greater population of Onitsha has spilled over to Nkpor, Ogidi, Obosi, Nkwelle Ezunaka and Ogbunike. These areas are also littered with huge storey buildings mainly for commercial purposes.
Finally, Igbos are enterprising and business-conscious race they build their house for return and social status
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