7 Questions To Ask Before Paying For Any Property In Lagos, Nigeria

A woman in Houston sent ₦95 million to a seller in Ajah last year. She had a signed Deed of Assignment, a survey plan, and photographs of the fence. What she did not have was one piece of paper from the Office of the Surveyor-General telling her the land sat inside a committed government acquisition.

That single document would have cost her ₦10,500. She found out eighteen months later, when the bulldozers came.

There are questions to ask before buying land in Lagos that separate a real asset from an expensive story. Not vague advice about doing your due diligence. Specific questions, with specific documents attached, that a seller either answers on paper or cannot answer at all. Here are seven of them.

The Questions to Ask Before Buying Land in Lagos Start With Paperwork

Nigerian land law does not reward good faith. It rewards documentation.

Section 26 of the Land Use Act 1978 states that any transaction which purports to confer an interest in land outside the provisions of the Act is null and void. Not voidable. Void. The money leaves your account and the law treats the transfer as though it never happened.

The Supreme Court applied that principle in Savannah Bank v. Ajilo (1989). A bank held a Deed of Mortgage with no Governor’s Consent behind it. When the bank tried to sell the property, the court declared the deed and the auction void. A full panel of seven justices. It has never been overruled.

So these questions are not about being difficult. They are about finding out, before you pay, whether the thing you are buying legally exists.

Question 1: Is This Land Under Government Acquisition, and Is It Committed?

Of all the questions to ask before buying land in Lagos, this is the one that decides everything else. Ask it first.

Lagos State holds large areas of land under acquisition. Some of it can be released back to occupants. Some of it cannot. The distinction is the word “committed,” and most buyers have never heard it.

The Lagos Lands Bureau official FAQ addresses this directly. Where land falls within a government acquisition, the answer states that if the land is not committed, the buyer will be referred to the Directorate of Land Regularisation for further processing.

Read that carefully. Uncommitted acquisition means there is a path forward. Committed acquisition means there is not. The land is spoken for, and no amount of money or persistence changes that.

A seller who cannot tell you which category their land falls into does not know what they are selling.

Question 2: Where Is the Land Information Certificate?

The Land Information Certificate is the document that answers Question 1 in writing. Ask for it by name.

The Lands Bureau FAQ describes it as a certificate which clearly indicates the status of land and states whether it is a committed acquisition or otherwise. That is the entire ball game in one sentence.

One detail trips up almost everyone, including some lawyers. The Land Information Certificate does not come from the Lands Bureau. It comes from the Office of the Surveyor-General, through a process called charting. The Surveyor-General describes charting as the procedure carried out for status determination for the preparation of a land information certificate.

The published charting fee is ₦10,500.

If you are buying from abroad and take only one action from this article, make it this one. Ten thousand naira and a few weeks of patience against the entire purchase price is not a close call.

Question 3: Does the Deed Contain the Governor’s Consent Clause?

Not “will you get consent later.” Does the document you are about to sign contain the endorsement clause for Governor’s Consent?

This sounds like a technicality. It is not. Sylvester Udemezue, a lecturer at the Nigerian Law School, sets out the consequence in the African Journal of Law and Human Rights. Where the consent clause is left out of a deed, that omission may be relied upon to argue that the parties never intended to submit the instrument for the Governor’s consent at all.

In other words, the missing clause is not neutral. It becomes evidence against you.

The clause also protects you. In Ilori v. Ishola (2018), the Supreme Court held that where an agreement is entered into subject to the consent of the Governor, the agreement remains an inchoate idea until that consent is obtained, and no interest in the property passes until then. The clause is what keeps the transaction alive while you wait.

Ask to see it in the draft. Before you sign, not after.

Question 4: Has Consent Been Granted, or Only Applied For?

“Consent is processing” is the most expensive sentence in Lagos real estate.

Here is why it works so well on buyers. There is no legal deadline. Udemezue states it plainly in the same paper: there is no definite timeline for applying for or for obtaining Governor’s consent. A seller can say “it is processing” for six years without ever telling a lie you could prove.

Meanwhile, your position is weak in a specific way. Until consent is granted, your interest is equitable, not legal, and an unconsented deed is not admissible to prove title. You are holding a claim, not a property.

So ask for one of two things. Either the consent itself, or the dated filing receipt from the Lands Bureau showing the application was actually lodged. A receipt is a fact. A reassurance is not.

The Lands Bureau publishes an indicative turnaround of about 30 days from the date of payment for Governor’s Consent. If a seller has been “processing” since 2023, something other than processing is happening.

Our earlier guide on buying property without Governor’s Consent walks through what actually happens to buyers who accept the promise.

Question 5: Is Your Agent on the LASRERA Register?

You can check this yourself, free, in about ninety seconds. Almost nobody does.

Lagos runs a public LASRERA practitioner search with a licence status filter that returns either Active or De-Registered. No login. No fee.

The scale of the problem is official. At the 2024 Ministerial Press Briefing, Barakat Odunuga-Bakare, Special Adviser to the Governor on Housing, told reporters that LASRERA had a database of 925 registered individuals and organisations on its registration portal, while over 2,550 practitioners had enrolled to be registered. Enrolled is not registered. Most people taking your money in Lagos are in neither column.

Practising without registration is an offence under the Real Estate Regulatory Authority Law 2021, carrying a fine of not less than ₦250,000 for an individual and not less than ₦1,000,000 for an organisation.

If your agent is not on that register, ask why. The answer tells you what kind of transaction you are in.

Question 6: What Will Perfection Actually Cost Me Under the 2026 Blue Book?

Budget for this before you commit, because it changed this year and it changed hard.

Lagos revised its Fair Market Value schedule, known as the Blue Book, with effect from 1 May 2026. Banwo & Ighodalo confirmed that the revised Blue Book determines the rates for assessing statutory fees payable on real estate transactions in Lagos State, including Governor’s consent fee, stamp duties, registration fee, capital contribution and premium. The schedule is reviewed every five years. The last version was 2021.

The transitional rule matters if your deal is older than you think. Applications submitted before 1 May 2026 are assessed on the 2021 rates.

On scale, BusinessDay reported that experts estimate the increase at 300%. Its analysis put Governor’s Consent on a Lekki Phase 1 property at ₦40 million to ₦90 million in 2026, against ₦12 million to ₦18 million a decade earlier. On Banana Island, perfection costs alone can reach ₦700 million to ₦1 billion on a property valued near ₦10 billion.

The percentages themselves are computed against that assessed value. Confirm the current schedule with the Lands Bureau at the time of your transaction rather than relying on a figure quoted by a seller.

Question 7: If This Is Family Land, Who Actually Has Authority to Sell?

Family land is where the confident buyer gets caught, because the seller is often genuinely related to the land and genuinely not entitled to sell it.

Two things are true at once. First, pre-1978 family land is not outside the consent regime. That is precisely what Savannah Bank v. Ajilo decided. The court held that a deemed grant is to be treated as a grant by the Governor with all the attendant consequences, and Karibi-Whyte JSC confirmed that section 22 is of general application to every rights holder under the Act.

Second, a signature from one family member is not a sale. Authority sits with the family head and principal members, and a transfer without it can be void or voidable depending on who signed.

The state takes the surrounding conduct seriously. The Lagos Directorate of Public Prosecutions reported 7,500 petitions to the task force on land grabbers, with 4,283 resolved and 205 land grabbers arrested. The Attorney-General, Lawal Pedro SAN, said property transactions in Lagos have been greatly hindered by the activities of the Omo-Onile and Ajagungbales.

Ask who is signing, in what capacity, and on whose authority. Get the answer in writing.

The Pattern Behind All Seven Questions

Every one of the questions to ask before buying land in Lagos does the same thing. It converts a spoken assurance into a document that either exists or does not.

That is the whole discipline. Sellers do not usually lie outright. They use words that sound like facts. “The land is clean.” “Consent is processing.” “My uncle is the family head.” None of those is checkable. A Land Information Certificate is checkable. A LASRERA status is checkable. A filing receipt is checkable.

For buyers overseas, this is the part that actually damages. You cannot walk into Alausa yourself, so you depend on whoever is on the ground. The Lands Bureau FAQ was still answering, as of its published version, that online perfection from abroad was not available at the moment but work was in progress. Assume you need a person you trust, and assume you need documents, not updates.

If you want the surrounding checks in sequence, our guides on what to double-check before final payment and the difference between a survey plan and a C of O cover the ground either side of this article. The warning signs of fake land documents piece covers what forged paperwork looks like when it arrives.

How Edenbrooks Homes Handles These Seven Questions

At Edenbrooks Homes, a buyer should never have to ask most of these questions, because the answers are part of what we hand over.

Our developments in Lekki Phase 1, including Maison D’Eko Residences III, Maison D’Eko Residences, Wakefield Apartments and Paragon Apartments, sit on titled land with perfected Governor’s Consent. The title chain is documented before a buyer is asked for anything. You are not buying a process that will be completed later. You are buying a property that is already legally what we say it is.

Ask us the questions to ask before buying land in Lagos anyway. A developer who cannot answer them on paper is telling you something.

Contact us today to start the conversation. Our team will walk you through the full title documentation on every Edenbrooks development, and answer each of these seven questions with a document rather than a promise.

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