There’s the ignorance that when a buyer of a landed property pays for the property and the deed of assignment is executed and the title documents change hands and it’s been transferred from the seller to the buyer then the transaction is complete. Albeit, the transaction is still inchoate and very much incomplete save and except the title document has been duly perfected.
Perfection of title is the completion of the acquisition of interest, transfer of title and ownership vested in the land. It is the active step taken by parties to the transaction to complete the transaction by registering the title document with the appropriate state land registry where the land is situated.
There are three active steps taken in perfection of title in land transactions in Nigeria; it starts from the obtaining of the Governor’s consent or approval, to stamping the documents and the final step is registration with appropriate land registry.
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According to the Land Use Act, the Governor holds in trust every land in the state and for every transaction on a land to be complete and valid, the consent of the Governor who is the grand landlord of the state must first be obtained and his approval on the transaction must be duly gotten in writing. A land transaction that is yet to be approved by the Governor of the state where the land is situated is yet to be complete (in the case of the Federal Capital Territory, the FCT minister is the one in charge of the land and his consent must be obtained for the land transaction to be valid).
Once the Governor’s consent has been obtained (or the FCT minister in the case of the FCT), the next step is the stamping of the land transaction document and payment of stamp duties. You pay the appropriate state or federal revenue collectors for the transaction documents to be stamped. The stamp duty charge is usually 2-3% of the value of the transaction depending on the state.
The third and final stage is to register the documents with the state land registry where the land is located. This process is to be followed step by step as none of the stages can come before the other; the first step must be to obtain Governor’s consent or approval on the transaction then follows stamping of the documents and payment of stamp duties then you can take the documents to the land registry for registration. Once the documents have been registered, the title can be said to be perfected and the transaction will no longer be said to be inchoate.
According to s.62(1) of Lagos State Lands Registration Law, 2015, transactions on land or transfer of land title shall be deemed to be complete only after the deeds have been registered at the Land Registry of the state.