A particular statement used by most of my clients is that there is no need to confirm the status of a land because a lot of houses have been built in an area or sometimes that they say i trust the estate and the estate agent selling the property is a family friend.
Firstly I will like to inform you that your friend who is an estate agent has one job and it is to sell you a land, most times the sellers do not need to have experience in land matters but have experience in selling and it is only up to you to do your due diligence of confirming that what you are buying is the best.
In most cases these people selling the land do not even know what they are selling or have an idea of what the land status above means and what to do to get the land status or what to do after getting it.
And on the topic that an area has been built up with multiple buildings worth millions of Nairas, I would like to ask an important question.
If you have noticed that areas where the government demolishes properties have power (electricity) connection and other amenities like schools and police stations.
So what is other people's building compared to government buildings and from this example you can be rest assured you can’t be misguided by the number of buildings in an area.
Developments or social amenities in an area is not a reference that a land is free from government acquisition.
So you can see that normally if you are not meant to live in an area the government that has not been zoned for residential then the government should not give you electricity and other amenities, but I believe the government do want to care for it citizens and do will only demolish whenever they need to and do intentionally try as much as possible not to because i believe thay know most people have been innocently misguided but when there are greater need of the land then the government will act accordingly.
That reminds me of an experience I had with a group from Abuja, they came into Lagos to buy a land along the ibeju lekki corridor facing the Atlantic ocean, these group had it in mind to buy almost 30 hectares which was valued around 3 billion Naira, I did advise them to process the charting information certificate, but they will persistent that they had all the connections from Abuja and they could buy any land anywhere in Nigeria.
Few hours to the completion of the deal one of them gave me the go ahead to get the charting information certificate and paused the transaction, when the result was delivered , the land was identified as a zone for a federal petroleum facility and they had to go back to Abuja and end the purchase.
Most of the land in already developed areas like Ajah and Lekki are under government acquisition while some can be processed to meet all requirements some can’t and also the same goes for land in areas termed undeveloped like epe, badagry and many other areas in Lagos state.
The charting information application will be responded to by the office of the surveyor general of Lagos state on behalf of the Lagos state government and it indicates what a land area has been officially allocated for and your surveyor will advise on how to proceed.
In most cases when a land falls within a government acquisition it does not mean that the land is bad, but it mostly means the documentation of the land requires a different approach from a situation when the land is free from any known government acquisition .
In this blog we will be speaking about How to know a government acquisition land in Lagos state and the process to identify the status of a land, in the case in which you would like to study about the different process to documentation for the different types of land to prove ownership of the land, click on the link below.
To know if a land is not going to result in headaches in the future is a very important step to take, as this is for people tending to build and investors, I see a lot of advert where people use the future Airport in Ibex lekki has the selling point and no one has decided to ask the question where is the Airport and no one is also trying to find out if the land they are buying falls within the airport.
What if you are buying the land within the airport, how will you know?
The following steps will be followed know if a land falls under government acquisition in Lagos state
