When the Government Wants Your Land: Lessons From the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway

When that happens, the correct process involves a formal revocation notice and the payment of compensation. This is the Nigerian version of what other countries call compulsory acquisition, eminent domain, or a compulsory purchase order. The land goes to the public project. The owner is meant to be paid.

The friction, and the reason projects like the coastal highway generate so much anxiety, is almost always in the compensation. Owners and the government often disagree on what is owed, how it is valued, and when it is paid.

What compensation covers, and what it often misses

Here is a detail that catches many buyers by surprise. Historically, compensation under the Land Use Act focused on the value of improvements, meaning the buildings and structures on the land, plus unexhausted development, rather than the full market value of the bare land itself. In a fast-appreciating area, that gap can be large. You might be paid for your house at assessed rates while the underlying land, which may have multiplied in value, is valued far more conservatively.

This is why the wider coastal highway story has featured protests and disputes. Earlier reporting on the project described federal compensation being paid at officially gazetted rates, with one tranche reported at ₦2.75 billion, while some owners said they had not been paid at all. When the President said compensation would come "at the right time," he was speaking into exactly this history of delay and disagreement.

For a buyer, the takeaway is not that compensation never comes. It is that relying on it is a poor substitute for not buying inside a corridor in the first place.

How to check before you buy

The single most useful habit is to find out whether the land sits on, or near, a planned public work before you pay. Several checks make this possible.

Ask the state or federal authority about acquisition and setbacks. Land near a major road, rail line, waterway, or power line usually carries a setback, which is a strip you are not allowed to build on, and sometimes a right-of-way reserved for the project. A parcel can be genuine and titled and still be partly unbuildable because of a setback.

Request a search that reveals "committed" or "acquired" land. In several states, some land is officially marked as committed to government purposes and cannot be freely sold or developed. A registry search, done by a lawyer, can flag this. Buying committed land is one of the quieter ways diaspora money disappears, because the documents can look clean while the land is spoken for.

Read the survey plan against the project maps. Infrastructure corridors are published and mapped. A surveyor can overlay the parcel's coordinates against known alignments for roads like the coastal highway. If the plot falls inside the corridor, you want to know before, not after.

Be cautious with land marketed on the promise of a mega-project. Corridors attract speculation. A plot sold to you because it is "on the coastal highway" may be the very plot the project needs. Proximity to infrastructure raises value, but land inside the take line is a liability, not an asset.

The bigger point for remote buyers

A demolition notice does not care how much you paid or how honest your seller was. Government acquisition is a legal risk that sits on top of the ordinary risks of fraud and bad title. It is checkable, but only if you know to check, and only if someone competent does the searching on the ground while you are abroad.

Treat any purchase near a visible or planned public project as needing an extra layer of due diligence. Confirm the setback. Confirm the parcel is not committed or acquired. Confirm the survey does not clip the corridor. Get these in writing before money moves.

For buyers trying to weigh these risks from a distance, Bektu (https://bektu.com) is a transparency and research platform that tracks Nigerian developer delivery history. It is not a marketplace and not a brokerage. Understanding a developer's record does not remove government acquisition risk, but it helps you tell a serious operator, who will have done the corridor and setback checks, from one who is quietly selling you a problem.

The coastal highway will reshape a large stretch of Nigeria's coastline, and most owners along it will be fine. The ones who suffer are usually those who bought without asking the one question that mattered: is this land already spoken for by something bigger than the seller.

*This article draws on Daily Post's 10 August 2026 report of President Tinubu's remarks on the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway service lane, and on prior Nigerian reporting on compensation for the project.*