The short answer: buying family land is legal. Buying it from the wrong family member is not — and the difference is not a technicality you can fix later.
If the did not consent to the sale, the transaction is void from the beginning. Not weak. Not fixable. Void — as though it never happened, no matter what you paid.
Everything else in this article follows from that one rule.
First, a fair word about omonile
"Omonile" means children of the land. Many are genuine customary landowning families whose ancestors held that ground for generations, and selling their land is entirely lawful when done properly.
The problem is not the families. It is that the sale process happens outside formal records, so a buyer has no easy way to tell a properly authorised sale from an unauthorised one — and some sellers exploit exactly that gap, selling the same plot to several buyers, or selling land they have no authority over.
The rule that decides everything: void or voidable
Nigerian courts settled this in Ekpendu v. Erika in 1959, and it has been applied consistently ever since. Who signs determines what you get.
| Who sold it | Legal effect | What you hold |
|---|---|---|
| A family member, without the family head's consent | Nothing. Ever. | |
| The family head, selling it as his own private property | Void | Nothing |
| The family head, on behalf of the family, without consenting | Something — unless challenged in time | |
| Family head and principal members together | Valid | A real interest |
Void and voidable are worlds apart, and this is the sentence to remember from this article.
Void means the sale never legally existed. No court can rescue it. Your money bought a piece of paper.
Voidable means the sale stands unless a non-consenting family member goes to court promptly to set it aside. If they sit on their rights, delay can amount to acquiescence and bar their claim — in one case a ten-year delay was fatal to the challenge.
So a sale by the family head without full family agreement is survivable. A sale by a family member behind the head's back is not.
Who must sign
The head of the family must join in the conveyance, and the principal members must consent, or the transfer is void from the outset. In practice that means:
- Establish who the family head actually is — independently, by asking around the community, not by accepting the seller's word
- Identify the principal members — typically the senior representative of each branch of the family
- Get every one of them to sign the Deed of Assignment, not just attend the meeting
- If a is used, confirm the family head granted it
- Have witnesses present who see the actual handing over — customary sales require witnesses to the transfer of possession
One useful safeguard to know: a family head holds family land in trust and is prevented from obtaining a Certificate of Occupancy over it in his own name. If someone produces a C of O in a personal name over what everyone locally calls family land, that is a question, not an answer.
The levies problem
The second risk is not the sale — it is what comes after. Buyers routinely report demands for further payments at every stage of construction: foundation, decking, roofing, flooring. Each demand arrives with the implication that work stops until it is met.
Lagos legislated against this. The Lagos State Properties Protection Law, signed on 15 August 2016, prohibits forceful entry, illegal occupation, and violent or fraudulent conduct in relation to landed property. Conviction carries between five and twenty-one years' imprisonment, plus fines at the court's discretion. Unauthorised and fraudulent land sales are criminalised under the same law.
A Special Task Force on Land Grabbers was created in June 2016 to enforce it. Its services are free — you pay only your own lawyer to draft the petition.
An honest caveat. The law bars agents from collecting fees at construction sites, but it does not outlaw family levies outright — a gap legal commentators have criticised as an inconsistency in the statute.
So the practical answer is not "the law protects me." It is: agree every payment in writing, in full, before you pay for the land. An undocumented understanding is exactly what later demands are built on.
Before you pay anything
- Confirm the land is excised and gazetted. Without excision, the family may have no right to sell at all — the land still belongs to government.
- Chart the survey at the Surveyor-General's office to confirm the plot's acquisition status and its true position.
- Verify the family head and principal members independently in the community.
- Ask what else has been sold nearby and to whom. Double-selling leaves traces if you ask neighbours rather than the seller.
- Run a land search at Alausa for any registered interest or dispute.
- Use your own lawyer to draft the deed and confirm the signatories. Never the seller's.
- Pay by traceable transfer, with a receipt naming every recipient. Cash leaves you nothing to prove.
Red flags
| What you see | What it means |
|---|---|
| Only one person signs for the whole family | Likely void. Get the head and principal members. |
| "The family head travelled, we'll get his signature later" | No signature, no sale. Wait. |
| Pressure to pay cash today for a discount | Urgency is the oldest tool in land fraud. |
| Different people claim to be the family head | A succession dispute. Walk away. |
| Seller cannot show excision or gazette details | The family may have no right to sell. |
| Vague talk of "development fees" later | Get every payment fixed in writing now. |
Bottom line
Family land is not automatically bad land. Some of the best-value plots in Lagos come through customary sales, and generations of buyers have acquired good title this way. But the protection is entirely in the process: excision confirmed, signatories verified, everyone signing, every payment documented, your own lawyer drafting.
Skip a signature and you have not bought land cheaply. You have bought nothing, expensively.
Sources
- Odukwe v. Ogunbiyi (1998) — sale of family land without the head's consent is void ab initio
- Contentious sale of family land — the three categories, citing Ekpendu v. Erika (1959) 4 F.S.C. 79
- Customary land tenure — the Ekpendu v. Erika rules, acquiescence and estoppel
- Fides — the family head holds land in trust and cannot obtain a C of O in his own name
- Supreme Court — where there is no family head, sale by principal members is valid
- LawPavilion — the Lagos State Properties Protection Law 2016, section by section
- Kujenga Amani — the Special Task Force on Land Grabbers and how petitions work
- Academic appraisal of the 2016 law — penalties, and the gap on family levies
This article explains general legal principles in Lagos State. It is not legal advice. Customary land transactions turn heavily on their specific facts — engage a qualified property lawyer before paying for family land.
