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Documentation is very important in any transactions made in acquiring any Landed property or other type properties. Documentation is the seal of any deal between two or more people in any Real Estate business. It entails several processes and involves signatures of parties in the transaction, date, time and Title of the said document.

These documents are usually more than one or two, because of the various professional fields needed to approve its different document status and authenticity and as it ranges from one property type to another. Such documents are as follows:

A Gazette is a very powerful instrument the community owns and can replace a Certificate of Occupancy to grant title to the Villagers.

A community owning a Gazette can only sell lands to an individual within those lands that have been excised to them. The community or family head of that land has the right to sign your documents for you if you purchase lands within those excised acres or hectares of land.

If the government based on some reasons best known to them decides to revoke or acquire your land (when it is located within a gazetted area), you will be entitled to compensation.

The best way to know whether a land is under acquisition or falls within an excised/gazetted area is to get a surveyor to chart the site and take it to the surveyor general’s office to do a land search.

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN EXCISION AND GAZETTE
As an example, if Victoria Island, Ikoyi and Lekki were all part of one big Community joined together and called Oniru, and it had no separation to know which area is called Ikoyi, Lekki or Victoria Island; and the Government was interested in that area and decides to take a portion of it for itself as an Urban Area, it will record this acquisition in the official Government Gazette and also record that the remaining land has been excised and given to the traditional family to have and do whatever they please.

CERTIFICATE OF OCCUPANCY

A Certificate of Occupancy (C of O) officially leases land to you, the applicant, for 99 yrs. According to the 1978 land use Act law by the Federal Government of Nigeria