Nigeria Wants a National Land Registry. Here Is Why That News Actually Matters to Diaspora Buyers

At the 20th Africa International Housing Show in Abuja in July 2026, the Federal Ministry of Housing and Urban Development spent time on a subject that rarely makes headlines but sits underneath almost every property problem in the country: land records. The government restated its push for a national land titling and registration programme, and officials again floated the goal of a unified, digital land registry that would end the era of missing files at state land bureaus.

For a diaspora buyer, this sounds like dry policy. It is not. The state of Nigeria's land records is the single biggest reason property fraud is so common, and any real change here would change the risk you carry every time you buy.

One number explains most of the problem

Less than ten percent of land in Nigeria is formally registered. Government officials have put the figure of unregistered land at over ninety percent. Think about what that means in practice. For the large majority of plots in the country, there is no clean, government held record that says who owns this exact piece of ground. Ownership is proved through a patchwork of documents held by private individuals, and often through nothing more than local knowledge of who sold what to whom.

When there is no reliable central record, three things follow. The same plot can be sold to several buyers, because no shared system flags that it is already taken. Documents can be forged, because there is no easy way to check a paper against an official source. And disputes drag on for years, because two parties can each hold documents that look valid and there is no single authority to settle which one is real. Almost every Nigerian land scam grows in the gap left by weak records.

What is actually being proposed

The reforms discussed by the Ministry go under a few names, including the Nigerian Land Titling, Registration and Documentation Programme. The Federal Government has also inaugurated land reform task teams and pushed the idea of a National Land Commission to standardise how land is administered across all 36 states. The stated aims are consistent: register far more of the country's land, modernise the systems that store those records, cut the cost and time of transactions, and give owners more secure tenure, meaning a stronger, clearer claim to their land.

One approach being used is systematic titling, where officials map and register every parcel in a defined area at once, with neighbouring owners present to confirm boundaries, rather than waiting for individuals to come forward one by one. Done well, this is how a country moves from ten percent registered land toward the norm in most functioning property markets, where you can look up a plot and see who holds title in minutes.

Officials have also tied the reform to money. The government has spoken about unlocking as much as 150 billion dollars in what economists call dead capital, meaning land and buildings that people occupy but cannot use as collateral or sell easily because they lack formal, bankable title. Registered land can be borrowed against, insured, and transferred cleanly. Unregistered land mostly cannot.

The honest caveat

None of this has arrived yet, and Nigerian land reform has a long history of ambitious announcements that move slowly in practice. The Land Use Act of 1978, the law that still governs how land is held in Nigeria, has been described as overdue for reform for years without a major overhaul passing. Digital registry proposals exist in several states, but the transition is incomplete almost everywhere, and applicants still often depend on someone physically present at a bureau to chase a file. Treat the July announcements as a direction of travel, not a finished system you can rely on today.

What it changes for you right now

Until a national registry exists, the burden of proof stays exactly where it has always been: on the buyer. That means the practical rules do not change. Verify title directly at the relevant state land registry rather than trusting a document handed to you. In Lagos that is the Lagos State Lands Registry. In the Federal Capital Territory that is the Abuja Geographic Information Systems, known as AGIS. Trace the ownership chain through every deed of assignment. Use your own lawyer, not the seller's. And be sceptical of any plot that cannot be looked up in an official system, because a plot that lives only on paper is the easiest kind to fake.

The reform also gives you a useful question to ask sellers and developers now. Is this land captured in the state's electronic land records, and can you show me the registry entry, not just the certificate? A seller dealing in properly registered, digitised land will be able to answer. A seller relying on the ninety percent that sits outside the system usually cannot, and that gap is where buyers lose money.

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. Better public records would make everyone's job easier, but until they arrive, a developer's documented track record remains one of the few checks a distant buyer can actually rely on.

A national land registry would not make fraud impossible. It would make it much harder, and it would move the advantage away from the forger and toward the honest buyer. That is why a policy panel at a housing show in Abuja is worth paying attention to, even from thousands of miles away.