What You Are Actually Buying: A Due Diligence Framework for Lagos Property

What You Are Actually Buying: A Due Diligence Framework for Lagos Property

Most defective property purchases in Lagos do not look defective on the day they close. The money moves, a receipt is issued, a survey plan changes hands, and the buyer goes home believing the matter is settled. The problem surfaces years later, usually at the exact moment the buyer needs the property to work for them. They want to sell. They want to develop. They want to borrow against it. That is when they discover that what they hold is a claim rather than a title.

The distinction matters more than any other single factor in a Nigerian property transaction. Payment does not transfer ownership. Documentation does.

THE RECEIPT PROBLEM

A receipt proves that you paid somebody. It does not prove that the person you paid had anything to sell.

This sounds obvious when written down. In practice, a great deal of money changes hands in Lagos on the strength of a receipt, a hand-drawn survey and the confidence of the person collecting the funds. Buyers who would never invest in a company without seeing its accounts will part with substantial sums for land after a single site visit and a conversation.

The reason is partly cultural and partly structural. Land in Lagos frequently originates from family holdings where ownership was never documented in the modern sense. Boundaries were understood rather than recorded. Authority to sell was communal rather than individual. When that land enters the formal market, the informality does not disappear. It simply becomes invisible to the buyer.

THE SEQUENCE OF THE CLEAN TITLE FOLLOWS

A properly perfected title in Lagos runs through a fixed sequence. Understanding the sequence is the fastest way to identify where a particular transaction sits.

**Root of title.** This is the document or event from which the seller's ownership originates. It may be a Certificate of Occupancy, a deed of assignment traced back through prior owners, a family conveyance, or an excision granted to a community. Every subsequent step depends on this one being sound. A defective root cannot be cured by good documentation further down the chain.

**Search at the Lands Registry.** A formal search at the Lagos State Lands Bureau reveals what the state's records show about the parcel. It confirms whether the title the seller is presenting is registered, whether there are encumbrances, and whether the property sits under a government acquisition.

**Survey verification.** The survey plan is charted at the office of the Surveyor General to confirm that the coordinates correspond to the land being sold and that the parcel does not fall within an area committed to government purposes. A survey plan that has never been charted is a drawing, not a verification.

**Deed of assignment.** The instrument that transfers the interest from seller to buyer. This is where the commercial terms become legal terms, and where poor drafting creates problems that surface much later.

**Governor's consent.** Under the Land Use Act, the alienation of a statutory right of occupancy requires the consent of the Governor. Until consent is obtained, the transaction is not complete in the way most buyers assume it is.

**Registration.** Registration of the instrument at the Lands Registry places the transaction on the public record and protects the buyer against competing claims.

Skip any of these steps and you have not bought less title. You have bought a weaker position that becomes visible only when it is tested.

## WHERE TRANSACTIONS BREAK

Four failures account for the majority of disputed purchases in Lagos.

**Family land sold without full authority.** Where land is held by a family, the head of family and the principal members must generally concur in a sale. A sale by one branch, or by a person holding themselves out as having authority they do not have, creates a title that other members of the family can challenge. These challenges often arrive years after the sale, sometimes after the buyer has built.

**Excision and gazette treated as title.** An excision releases land from government acquisition and a gazette records it. Neither is a title in the hands of an individual buyer. They establish that the land is available to be dealt with, which is a necessary condition rather than a sufficient one. Buyers regularly treat a gazette number as the end of the enquiry when it is closer to the beginning.

**Consent left for later.** Consent is treated as a formality to be attended to after possession. It is not. The longer the gap between the transaction and the application, the more the position can deteriorate, particularly if the seller becomes uncooperative, relocates or dies.

**Survey overlapping government acquisition.** Land committed to government purposes cannot be validly sold by a private party. Charting the survey is the only reliable way to establish this, and it is the step most frequently skipped because it takes time.

## THE FOUR CHECKS

Four enquiries prevent most of the failures above.

1. **Search at the Lagos State Lands Registry.** Establish what the state's records say about the parcel and the seller's interest.

2. **Chart the survey at the Surveyor General's office.** Establish that the coordinates are real, that they match the physical land, and that they do not sit in an acquisition.

3. **Physical inspection and local enquiry.** Visit the land. Ask the neighbours and the adjoining occupiers who they know as the owner. Local knowledge frequently surfaces disputes that no registry search would reveal, particularly where the land has been sold more than once.

4. **Litigation check.** Establish whether the parcel is subject to pending proceedings. Land under active litigation should not be purchased regardless of how attractive the price appears, and an attractive price is often the signal.

Three of these four cost very little. All four together cost a fraction of the purchase price and considerably less than a single week of contested litigation.

## The arithmetic that buyers get wrong

Buyers routinely resist due diligence on cost grounds and then spend multiples of the saved amount defending a position they should never have taken.

Verification is measured in weeks. Litigation over land in Nigeria is measured in years, and often in appeals. During that period the property cannot be sold, cannot reliably be developed, and cannot be used as security. The opportunity cost frequently exceeds the legal cost.

Framed properly, due diligence is not an expense attached to the purchase. It is the mechanism by which the purchase price is justified. A verified title at a higher price is a better commercial outcome than an unverified title at a discount.

## What to require before funds move

For any significant purchase, the following should be in hand before payment:

- Copies of the seller's title documents, traced to root
- A search report from the Lands Registry
- A charted survey plan
- Confirmation of the seller's authority to sell, particularly where a family, an estate, a company or an attorney is involved
- A draft deed of assignment reviewed on your behalf rather than on the seller's
- A clear plan and timeline for obtaining consent and completing registration

Where a seller resists any of this, the resistance is information. Sellers with clean title are generally comfortable with scrutiny because scrutiny confirms their position and supports their price.

## The principle underneath all of it

In Lagos, you are not buying land. You are buying the strength of the seller's title. The land will be there in twenty years. Whether your claim to it survives contact with a competing claimant depends entirely on the work done before the money moved.

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