The need to ensure the production of quality housing has been of remarkable interest to the government of Nigeria, as housing quality is considered to be a symbol of a country with an effective housing delivery system. However, government policy responses to the need to provide quality housing achieved little or nothing. Indeed, the actual provision of housing came nowhere close to the targets specified in the national housing policy. Many houses in Nigeria are obtained through other modes of formal and informal delivery processes, which influence the timing, quality, location and cost of housing. Moreover, there is little consensus on what constitutes 'quality' housing, and why different forms of housing delivery - within the public and private sectors are predominantly failing to deliver what people consider to be 'quality'. This thesis explores these problems through a study of Benin City, the capital of Edo State. Most existing literature on housing in Nigeria looks at state housing or slum housing, but in Benin City (as in many other parts of Nigeria) much of the population is comprised of low-income earners who live in housing that fits neither of these categories and is delivered in variety of formal and informal ways. There is, therefore, a major gap in existing literature about how housing is delivered for diverse groups of urban residents, and how this relates to diverse needs and ideas of quality. Such ideas of quality are shaped and responded to through complex structures and by actors whose actions can at times undermine residents' efforts to achieve quality. To examine this, this study investigates what 'quality' means to people, and why the needs and desires of home-owners are often not met through existing housing delivery systems within Nigeria. Through the analytical lenses of 'institutional multiplicity', 'insurgent planning', and 'corruption', this study fills this research gap by analysing the delivery of housing in Benin City and the role and influence of formal and informal institutions in that process. A qualitative method was adopted, and interviews and observations were employed. Fundamentally, findings contribute to wider academic discourses of housing delivery in Nigeria and Benin and emphasises that particular formal and informal institutions constrain the quality and quantity of housing produced in Benin City. The thesis makes an original contribution to knowledge by documenting the multiple levies collected by the 'Community Development Associations' and conceptualising these as 'informal impediments' which are the major constraint to quality housing delivery in Benin City.