Land Tenure and Title Risk in Agriculture
What Goes Wrong, What the Numbers Show, and What Actually Protects the Buyer
Land is the foundation of every farm we build, manage, or sell, and it is also the single largest source of unrecoverable loss for agricultural projects in Nigeria.
Nigeria’s land administration system, built on the Land Use Act of 1978, grants occupiers a right of occupancy rather than freehold ownership, and every transfer of that right legally requires the consent of a state governor. Land-related matters account for roughly three in ten of the estimated 27.5 million legal problems Nigerians face each year, and a typical case that reaches the High Court takes close to 938 days to conclude.
“Faced with months of delay and double-digit costs, many buyers choose to stop at a Deed of Assignment and skip formal registration altogether, which is precisely the shortcut that later produces disputes.”
— Land Tenure Analysis, Page 09
What You Will Discover Inside:
- The Scale of the Problem: Why land disputes account for about 30 percent of the nation’s legal problems, forming the single largest category.
- The Registry Bottleneck: An empirical look at why registering property requires 14 separate procedures and 82 days, costing 22.16% of value.
- Verified Protection Steps: A checklist of 5 mandatory verification checkpoints including Registry Searches, Survey Verification, and tracking Governor’s Consent through historical chains.