Lagos Just Sealed More Than 20 Buildings in Ikeja. The Reason Is a Trap Many Diaspora Buyers Fall Into

On 24 July 2026, the Lagos State Physical Planning Permit Authority (LASPPPA, the agency that approves and polices building plans in Lagos) sealed more than 20 properties in Ikeja for breaking physical planning rules. The affected properties included finished landed properties, uncompleted buildings, and structures with unauthorised extensions. It was part of a wider enforcement drive: earlier in the year Lagos removed 17 structures and sealed 52 others for planning infractions, and the state has published a list of 176 estates operating without approved layout plans.

For someone buying an apartment or a house in Lagos from abroad, these enforcement actions expose a gap in how many buyers think about property. Most people focus entirely on land title. Title matters enormously. But title is only half of what makes a built property safe to buy. The other half is planning and building approval, and the two are completely separate things.

Two different questions, two different offices

When you buy Nigerian property, there are two questions you need answered, and they are checked in different places.

The first is: who owns this land, and is that ownership properly documented? This is the world of title documents. A Certificate of Occupancy (C of O, the main land title granted by the state) or a Governor's Consent (the state approval required to transfer land that is already titled) answers this question. You verify it at the state land registry.

The second is: is the building on this land legal? This is the world of planning permits. Before anyone builds in Lagos, they are meant to obtain a planning permit that approves the design, the number of floors, the setbacks from the road, and the use of the land. That approval comes from LASPPPA, not from the land registry. A property can have a perfect title and still be an illegal structure if it was built without, or in breach of, that permit.

This is the trap. A seller shows you a clean C of O, you confirm the title is genuine, and you assume the building is fine. But the C of O says nothing about whether the block of flats was approved, whether it was allowed to have that extra floor, or whether the whole estate was laid out with government consent. When LASPPPA seals a building, the owner's title may be perfectly valid. It is the structure that is illegal.

What sealing actually means for a buyer

A sealed building cannot be legally occupied or worked on until the owner regularises it and the authority lifts the seal. If you have already paid for a unit in a sealed or unapproved building, your money is tied up in something you cannot move into, cannot rent out, and cannot easily resell. In the worst cases, structures built without approval, or on land the government has designated for something else, can be marked for demolition. Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu directed large scale demolition of illegal structures in parts of Lagos in June 2026. A demolished building leaves you with, at best, the bare land, and only if your title to that land was sound in the first place.

Diaspora buyers are especially exposed here because off-plan and newly built estates are marketed hardest to them. You are shown renderings, a show unit, and a title document, and the sale closes while you are abroad. Nobody hands you the planning permit, and most buyers do not know to ask for it.

How to protect yourself

Add planning approval to your checklist as a separate item from title, and make your lawyer confirm both before you pay.

Ask for the planning permit or building approval for the specific structure, not just the land title. Have your lawyer confirm it is genuine with LASPPPA for Lagos properties, or the equivalent planning authority in other states.

For an estate or an apartment block, ask whether the layout has an approved plan. The 176 estates Lagos flagged were operating without one. If an estate is on that kind of list, walk away.

Check that the building as it stands matches what was approved. An approved two floor design with two unapproved floors added is a sealing or demolition risk, and the extra floors are often exactly where the cheaper units are sold.

Be wary of a bargain in a hurry. Unapproved buildings are cheaper to put up, so they are often cheaper to buy. That discount is the risk, priced in.

Verifying a planning permit is not exotic. It is a routine check that a competent Nigerian property lawyer does as a matter of course. The buyers who get caught are the ones who never knew there were two separate approvals to confirm, and who treated a land title as if it also certified the building standing on it.

Bektu (https://bektu.com) is a transparency and research platform that tracks the delivery history of Nigerian developers. It is not a marketplace and not a brokerage. A developer that has repeatedly built without proper planning approval leaves a trail, and that trail is worth checking before you commit funds to anything they are selling.

The Ikeja sealings are a reminder that in Nigerian property, the question is never only who owns the land. It is also whether the thing built on it was ever allowed to be there.

Lagos Just Sealed More Than 20 Buildings in Ikeja. The Reason Is a Trap Many Diaspora Buyers Fall Into