Sustainable Construction Practices in Nigeria: A Comprehensive Analysis of Traditional and Modern Methods

Abstract

This review takes stock of where sustainable construction now stands in Nigeria, setting traditional building techniques alongside their modern counterparts and drawing on market intelligence from 2024–2025. More than sixty peer-reviewed papers, industry reports, and government documents published between 2020 and 2025 were synthesised to compare the performance, economic viability, and implementation hurdles of vernacular and contemporary sustainable methods. The stakes are considerable: the World Bank puts Nigeria’s infrastructure investment requirement at $3 trillion to keep pace with rapid urbanisation, while the construction market itself is forecast to climb from USD 34.37 billion in 2024 to USD 50.39 billion by 2034, a compound annual growth rate of 3.9%. Traditional techniques return 35–50% better thermal performance, 60–80% lower embodied energy, and 25–40% lower cost, yet they are held back by regulatory restrictions and a shortage of skilled labour. Awareness of green building is rising, but uptake has not kept pace: only 37 EDGE-certified projects exist, covering 712,395 m² and saving 25,244 MWh per year—between 8% and 12% of new construction. The evidence points to a sizeable opportunity in hybrid solutions that marry indigenous knowledge to modern technology, with recent case studies reporting 20–30% performance gains over conventional building. The dominant obstacles are outdated codes (78%), absent financing mechanisms (73%), and the poor social image of traditional methods (73%). On this basis the paper sets out evidence-led policy reform, capacity building, and integrated delivery strategies capable of scaling sustainable construction across Nigeria’s climatic zones, with the potential to reach 25–30% sustainable uptake by 2030.