The Group Managing Director of CFL Group of Companies, Lai Omotola, has given the Lagos State Land Registry seven days to address alleged irregularities in disputed land documents, threatening to seek ₦5 billion in damages if the authorities fail to act.
Omotola issued the ultimatum at a press conference in Lagos on Thursday, where he raised concerns over what he described as “Land Title Laundry” — an alleged scheme involving the manipulation of land records to make fraudulent ownership claims appear legitimate.
He said the practice was particularly concerning in high-value locations such as Ikoyi and Victoria Island, where abandoned properties could become targets for speculators seeking to manufacture ownership histories.
According to Omotola, the alleged scheme involves using the identities of deceased prominent individuals to construct fictitious chains of ownership, producing purportedly forged certificates and inserting them into official registry records. He claimed some documents were backdated to the 1970s to make verification more difficult.
He also alleged that compromised personnel within the land administration system helped introduce questionable documents into official records, allowing them to be presented as originals.
Omotola said the process could then involve declaring the supposed original documents lost, obtaining police affidavits and securing a Governor’s Consent to create the appearance of a legitimate transaction.
He stressed that a Governor’s Consent, which approves a property transfer, was distinct from a Certificate of Occupancy, which evidences a government grant of land rights. He argued that consent could not automatically validate an underlying title if investigations later established that the supporting documents were fraudulent.
The businessman cited a dispute involving his company and a property at 24 Adeola Odeku Street, Victoria Island, where he said construction was interrupted after another company allegedly arrived with police officers and sealed the premises, claiming ownership through a Governor’s Consent.
Omotola said his company investigated the rival ownership claim, which allegedly traced the property through the late Samuel Oladele Ige and the late Alhaji Ganiyu Amusan.
He claimed the dates of their deaths contradicted the alleged 2015 transactions attributed to them. According to him, Samuel Ige died in 2012, while Amusan died in 1994.
Omotola further alleged that investigators found a police affidavit purportedly sworn by Ige in 2015 to report a missing land certificate. He said Ige’s son, Niyi, disputed the document’s authenticity, including its photograph and signature.
He also questioned a letter of objection allegedly attributed to Ige and reportedly received by the Land Registry in September 2015, three years after his death.
According to Omotola, the Ige family petitioned the registry, which found sufficient merit in the complaint to invite beneficiaries of the disputed Governor’s Consent for proceedings that could lead to its deregistration. He alleged that the beneficiaries failed to attend on two occasions.
Omotola said the affected landowners want the disputed consent deregistered and the records corrected to reflect what they maintain is legitimate ownership.
He warned that failure to resolve the matter within seven days would leave them with no option but to seek judicial intervention and ₦5 billion in damages.
He urged the Lagos State Government to investigate the allegations and strengthen safeguards around land documentation to protect property owners and prospective investors from fraudulent claims.
