The Real Estate Managers and Consultants Association of Nigeria (REMCAN) is sounding a fresh alarm - this time not about who is selling the land, but about how the paperwork behind the sale is quietly structured to leave investors exposed. According to the association, a recurring pattern has emerged among certain developers who exploit a well-known but poorly understood gap in the Land Use Act 1978: the requirement for the Governor's consent before a right of occupancy can be validly assigned, mortgaged, or sub-let.
REMCAN's warning is blunt - many investors do not discover the defect in their purchase until years later, when they attempt to sell, mortgage, or develop the property, only to find that what they thought was a completed transaction was never legally perfected in the first place.
The Legal Gap at the Heart of the Warning
Section 22 of the Land Use Act 1978 provides that a holder of a statutory right of occupancy cannot validly assign, transfer, sublet, or mortgage that interest without first obtaining the consent of the Governor of the state where the land is situated. Section 26 goes further, declaring that any transaction carried out in violation of Section 22 is null and void.
On paper, this is meant to protect the integrity of land title in Nigeria. In practice, REMCAN says, it has become the very gap that unscrupulous developers exploit -because very few land transactions in Nigeria actually go through the slow, expensive and often opaque process of obtaining that consent. Instead, developers rely on Deeds of Assignment, Sale Agreements, and “allocation letters” that look official and are notarised, but that were never taken to the Governor's office for the statutory consent that alone makes the transfer valid.
Because the defect is a legal technicality rather than something visible on the face of the document, an investor can hold what appears to be a complete set of paperwork - survey plan, deed of assignment, receipt of payment, even a site plan approved by a local planning authority and still not hold a legally enforceable title. The problem stays invisible until the investor tries to do something that requires proof of clean title: selling the property, using it as loan collateral, or defending it against a rival claimant.
How the Loophole Is Exploited REMCAN
identifies several recurring tactics developers use to take advantage of this gap:
Selling before perfecting title - Developers acquire large tracts of land, often “raw” or unperfected land purchased from a community, a family, or an existing allottee, and immediately begin selling plots to investors before the underlying title has been perfected or the Governor's consent obtained on their own acquisition.
Multiple allocations on the same parcel -Because the original transaction was never registered with the state land registry, the same plot can quietly be resold to more than one buyer, with each investor unaware that others hold competing, and equally unperfected, claims to the same land.
Reliance on “excision” and “gazette” documents that don't complete the chain -Some developers point to a community's excision or a state gazette listing an area as released for private allocation, and stop there, without following through to obtain individual statutory rights of occupancy and consent for each plot sold, leaving buyers with paperwork that looks official but proves nothing conclusive in a title dispute.
Off-plan sales with no allocation in place - Investors are sold units or plots in a development that has not yet received the requisite governmental approvals at all, on the promise that documentation will “follow later,” a promise that, in REMCAN's account, is often never fulfilled.
Silence until it's too late - Because none of this affects an investor's day-to-day enjoyment of the property in the short term, the defect typically only surfaces when the investor tries to sell, obtain a mortgage, or defend the land from a revocation or a rival claimant, by which point the developer may be difficult to locate, or the statute of limitations and practical realities make recovery difficult.
REMCAN's Advice to Investors
The association is urging property investors to treat the Governor's consent - not the deed of assignment alone - as the real test of a legitimate transaction.
Its recommendations include:
• Demand evidence of registered title, not just a signed deed of assignment. Ask specifically whether Governor's consent has been obtained and registered, and request to see the consent endorsement or registration particulars.
• Conduct an independent search at the relevant state Land Registry before paying for any property, to confirm the seller's title is genuine, unencumbered, and not already subject to another allocation or a government acquisition notice.
• Engage a qualified estate surveyor, valuer, or property lawyer to verify documentation independently of the developer's own sales team, rather than relying on assurances from marketing agents.
• Be wary of “documentation to follow” promises. Any developer asking for full payment on the understanding that title perfection will happen later should be treated as a red flag, not a normal part of the process.
• Insist on transparency about the root of title - how the developer itself acquired the land, and whether that acquisition was itself properly consented to and registered.
Why This Matters Now
The warning lands at a moment when Nigeria's real estate sector and Lagos in particular - is seeing rapid land value appreciation and an influx of new investors, including diaspora buyers purchasing property remotely and relying heavily on marketing materials and trust rather than independent verification. REMCAN's concern is that this environment of rising prices and enthusiastic demand is precisely the environment in which documentation shortcuts are most easily hidden and most costly when eventually uncovered.
For investors, the underlying message is a familiar one dressed in a new example: in Nigerian real estate, a receipt and a deed are not the same thing as a title, and the gap between them, however small it looks on paper, is exactly where the risk lives.