thitipretty🎀

As a hart longs for flowing streams, so longs my soul for thee oh Lord. I AM a lover of Christ.

[thitipretty🎀 @thitipretty]

Please fellow Nigerian let's pray for Nigerian brothers and sisters in South Africa 😭😭😭#prayfornigeriansinsouthafrica

[legalnaija @LegalNaija]

If you have land anywhere in Nigeria — or your family does — do this:

→ Find out if a C of O exists. Check with the state Land Registry.
→ If no C of O — begin the perfection process with a property lawyer. Now.
→ If you are buying land — never pay without Governor’s Consent and registration in your name.
→ If family land has never been registered — it is vulnerable. Every day it remains unregistered, it is vulnerable.

The family that registers first usually wins.

Do not let that family be someone else.

Four years. ₦4.2 million in legal fees. One medical diagnosis. Eight months of two brothers not speaking.

That is what it costs to recover what should never have been taken.

But it was recoverable — because Mrs. Adeyemi knew where to look, and because there was enough paper trail to prove the fraud.

Some families are not that fortunate.

Some families lose. Permanently. Because the fraudster perfected the title before they did — and there was no fraud to prove. Just a gap in the paperwork.

Your land should not depend on luck.

At Legalnaija, we believe that access to legal knowledge is national infrastructure.

Not knowing the Land Use Act should not cost a family their inheritance.

Not knowing what “perfecting title” means should not undo 32 years of a teacher’s savings.

Find a property lawyer you trust.
Register what your family owns.
Understand the paper before you sign it.

The law protects what is documented.

Always.

— https://t.co/gPFcVYWY4B

Retweet if someone in your family has land that has never been formally registered.

#LegalNaija | #PropertyLaw | #LandRights | #LandUseAct | #AccessToJustice

[legalnaija @LegalNaija]

The Land Use Act of 1978 is the foundation of every land dispute in Nigeria.

Under it, all land belongs to the state government.

You hold a right of occupancy — granted by the Governor.

That right must be registered to be enforceable against third parties.

This is not a technicality.

It is the entire architecture of land ownership in Nigeria.

And most Nigerians who have “bought land” — have not been told this.

Baba Adeleke was not a negligent man.

He was a careful man who did not know what he did not know.

He bought land the way his community had always bought land — receipt, survey, witnesses, presence.

Nobody told him that the law required something else entirely.

That is the real theft in this story.

Not just Lekki Prime Estates.

But the gap between the law as written and the law as understood by ordinary Nigerians.

That gap is where families lose their inheritance.

[legalnaija @LegalNaija]

Here is what does NOT protect your land in Nigeria:

→ A receipt of purchase
→ A survey plan
→ Omo-onile approval or levies
→ Family witness at point of purchase
→ Photographs of you standing on the land
→ Years of paying “caretaker fees”
→ A handwritten agreement, even witnessed

Here is what DOES protect your land:

→ A registered Deed of Assignment
→ Governor’s Consent (for any land transfer in Lagos and most states)
→ A Certificate of Occupancy in your name, perfected at the Land Registry

If you do not have the second list — you do not own land.

You occupy it. Until someone with registered paper arrives.

[legalnaija @LegalNaija]

Here is what the four years cost.

Legal fees: ₦4.2 million.
Tokunbo’s travel: eleven trips from Abuja.
Sade’s flights from Canada: four.
Femi’s health: a hypertension diagnosis in year two that his doctor linked directly to stress.
The relationship between Femi and Tokunbo: they did not speak for eight months during a disagreement about litigation strategy.

They won.

But winning at that cost is a lesson in itself.

I’ve told you a story.

Now let me tell you what it means — because this is not a story about corruption, though corruption is in it.

It is a story about a gap.

The gap between what Nigerians believe protects their land — and what actually does.

[legalnaija @LegalNaija]

The judgment came on a Thursday morning in April 2023.

Justice Rotimi Adebayo. 47 pages.

The registration of title in favour of Lekki Prime Estates Limited was obtained by fraud.

The deed was forged.

The registration was void.

The land belonged to the Estate of Simeon Adeleke — Baba Adeleke’s full name, which Kemi had always used in full, always, even when the others shortened it.

They were standing outside the courtroom when Mrs. Adeyemi read them the operative paragraph.

Nobody spoke for a moment.

Then Femi sat down on the courthouse steps and put his face in his hands.

It was not over.

Judgment is not possession.

They still had to perfect the title. Still had to go to the Land Registry — properly, this time — and register their inheritance in the name of the estate, then formally in their four names.

It took another seven months.

More fees. More affidavits. More trips to government offices that opened at 10 and closed at 2.

But on a Tuesday morning in November 2023 — four years after their father’s burial — Tokunbo stood on the land with a registered Certificate of Occupancy in his hand.

His father had bought it in 1987.

It had taken his children until 2023 to actually own it.

[legalnaija @LegalNaija]

Mr. Gbadebo’s statement — obtained under caution — was the crack that broke everything open.

He had been approached in 2016 by a property broker who offered him ₦800,000 to process a “distressed estate” registration without the standard verification checks.

He had done it.

He had told himself it was a legitimate family transaction.

He had told himself this many times.

He had processed seventeen such registrations between 2015 and 2018.

The Adeleke land was number nine.

The court case ran for two and a half years.

Two and a half years of hearing dates, adjournments, interlocutory applications, a change of judge when the first fell ill, an attempt by Lekki Prime Estates’ lawyers to have the case struck out on procedural grounds.

Tokunbo flew in from Abuja for every hearing.

Sade attended virtually from Canada when she could, in person when she couldn’t afford not to.

Femi stopped sleeping properly sometime in the second year.

Kemi kept a file of every document, every date, every ruling — a three-inch binder that she carried to court like a talisman.

[legalnaija @LegalNaija]

The discovery process took eight months.

Mrs. Adeyemi subpoenaed the Land Registry.

She obtained the documents used to register Lekki Prime Estates’ title.

The Deed of Assignment they had filed named the vendor as one “Chief Remi Adeleke” — a purported family member who had sold the land on behalf of the estate.

There was no Chief Remi Adeleke.

There had never been a Chief Remi Adeleke.

The signature on the deed was a forgery.

Someone had invented a person, given him a title, and used him to steal land from a dead teacher’s children.

The question was: who?

Lekki Prime Estates was a shelf company — registered in 2014, dormant until 2017, with a registered address that turned out to be a cybercafe in Ikeja that had closed two years earlier.

The directors on paper were two names with no verifiable addresses, no BVNs that matched living individuals, no phone numbers that connected.

Someone had built a ghost company, used it to steal land, and then disappeared behind the paperwork.

Mrs. Adeyemi had seen this before.

She knew where to pull.

The thread she pulled was the Land Registry official who had processed the registration.

His name was in the file. Protocol required it — someone had to sign off on every registration.

His name was Mr. Gbadebo.

He had retired in 2019.

He was living in Abeokuta.

Mrs. Adeyemi did not approach him herself.

She filed a formal complaint with the Lagos State Ministry of Physical Planning.

Then she waited.

[legalnaija @LegalNaija]

Here is what Baba Adeleke didn’t know.

In Lagos State, under the Land Use Act 1978, all land belongs to the government.

What you buy is not land. What you buy is the right to occupy land — a statutory right of occupancy.

And that right is not yours — legally, formally, enforceable-in-court yours — until it is registered at the Land Registry.

A receipt proves you paid money.
A survey plan shows the coordinates.
Omo-onile levies prove you were there.

None of them prove legal title.

Only registration does that.

Lekki Prime Estates had done what Baba Adeleke had not.

Somehow — through a fraudulent transaction, a forged deed, a compromised registry official, or all three — they had filed papers.

They had gotten a registered title.

And in a dispute between a receipt and a registered title, Nigerian property law has a clear answer.

The registered title wins.

This is the rule that was about to take 32 years of a dead teacher’s savings from his four children.

Mrs. Adeyemi filed suit at the Lagos State High Court.

The case: a declaration that the title held by Lekki Prime Estates was obtained by fraud.

This was the only path.

Not “we bought it first.” Not “our father had a receipt.”

Fraud.

Because if the title was registered, you could not simply claim superior right.

You had to destroy the title.

And to destroy it, you had to prove it was obtained illegally

[legalnaija @LegalNaija]

They found her through a referral from a colleague of Tokunbo’s.

Her name was Mrs. Folake Adeyemi.

55 years old. 28 years in property law. An office in Maryland, Lagos — not Victoria Island, not Ikoyi — a practical office for practical work.

She had a wall of case files that reached the ceiling.

She listened to the whole story without interrupting.

Then she asked one question:

“Did your father ever perfect his title?”

They looked at each other.

“He had a receipt,” Tokunbo said.

“A survey plan,” Kemi added.

“He paid the Omo-onile —” Femi began.

Mrs. Adeyemi held up one hand.

“I mean — did he ever go to the Land Registry? File a Governor’s Consent? Register a Deed of Assignment?”

Silence.

Four children. One silence.

“He didn’t know he had to,” Sade said finally, from the phone on the table.

Mrs. Adeyemi nodded. Slowly. The nod of a woman who has heard this before.

[legalnaija @LegalNaija]

Tokunbo drove to Ibeju-Lekki the following Saturday.

He parked on the road beside the plot.

There was a fence around it now. A green-painted concrete fence he had never seen before.

A signboard on the fence:

“LEKKI PRIME ESTATES LIMITED — LUXURY ESTATE DEVELOPMENT — PHASE 2 COMING SOON”

He sat in his car for a long time.

Then he called his siblings

Sade flew in from Canada.

Femi wanted to go to the police.

Kemi wanted to go to their father’s old contacts, the Omo-onile elders, anyone who remembered the original transaction.

Tokunbo wanted a real lawyer — a property lawyer, not the young man from the estate agents.

They argued for two days.

They were four intelligent, educated people who loved their father.

And they were completely lost.

[legalnaija @LegalNaija]

They hired an Agent.

A young man from the estate agents their cousin recommended.

He was not a property lawyer.
He was someone who had handled a few land transactions.

But he was cheap.
And they were four grieving children trying to navigate bureaucracy while also planning a burial.

He told them to bring the receipt, the survey plan, and their father’s death certificate.

They brought everything.

He filed an application.

Six weeks later, he called Tokunbo.

There’s a problem,” the lawyer said.

The land had already been registered.

Not to Baba Adeleke.

To a company called Lekki Prime Estates Limited.

Registered in 2017.

Two years before their father died.

While he was still alive. Still paying his Omo-onile levies. Still visiting.

[legalnaija @LegalNaija]

Baba Adeleke had four children.

Tokunbo — the firstborn. An engineer in Abuja.
Sade — second. A nurse in Canada.
Femi — third. A trader in Lagos Island.
And Kemi — the last. A teacher, like her father, in Ibadan.

When he died in November 2019, they gathered for the burial.

The land came up on the second day.

It should have been a simple conversation.

It was not.

Tokunbo had done his own research.

Property prices in Ibeju-Lekki had exploded — the Dangote Refinery, Lekki Free Trade Zone, the new airport corridor.

Land that cost ₦12,000 in 1987 was now worth between ₦18 million and ₦25 million.

He presented this information to his siblings over dinner at the family house in Surulere.

Quietly. Carefully.

“We need to formalise this before someone else does,” he said.

Nobody disagreed.

Nobody understood what formalising it would require.

[legalnaija @LegalNaija]

Baba Adeleke was not a careless man.

He had a receipt from the seller.
He had a survey plan.
He had a family witness — his elder brother — who attended the purchase.
He had photographs from the day he first stood on the land.

For 32 years, he paid the Omo-onile levies.
He knew the caretaker by name.
He visited every two years, just to stand on it.

He did everything a man of his generation knew to do.

It was not enough!

[legalnaija @LegalNaija]

In 1987, Baba Adeleke bought land in Ibeju-Lekki.

It cost him ₦12,000.

He was a primary school teacher. It took him three years to save that money.

He built nothing on it. Just held it. Told his four children it was their future.

He died in 2019 believing he had given them something.

He had no idea what he had actually given them.

🧵 A thread.

[thitipretty🎀 @thitipretty]

Check out Insights's video! #TikTok https://t.co/AJuaSUZpp1

[thitipretty🎀 @thitipretty]

https://t.co/6sJOhrnmhK

[Unfiltered @quotesdaily100]

You Are Destroying Your Skin And Do Not Even Know It.

IMPORTANT:

1. Face – Don't wash with very hot water
2. Sunscreen – Don't skip on cloudy days
3. Pimples – Don't pop with unclean hands
4. Moisturizer – Don't apply on unwashed face
5. Scrub – Don't use more than twice weekly
6. Makeup – Don't ever sleep with it on
7. Eye Cream – Don't apply too close to eyes
8. Toner – Don't use products high in alcohol
9. Face Mask – Don't leave on through the night
10. Lips – Don't lick them to keep moist
11. Neck – Don't forget it when moisturizing
12. Hands – Don't skip sunscreen on them
13. Razor – Don't ever share with anyone
14. Towel – Don't rub your face too hard
15. Pillowcase – Don't go weeks without changing
16. Face – Don't keep touching it all day

Your skin reflects everything you do to it. Treat it right daily.

[Saira @AiWithSaira]

MY WIFE KEEPS PAYING FOR GMAIL STORAGE.

I told her to do this before.
She went from 14.9/15 GB to 6 GB in a single afternoon.

I hope this helps you ↓

[thitipretty🎀 @thitipretty]

@the_beardedsina With the breakdown you gave we were able to calculate and raise help from family and friends.
Today, I am happy to inform you that I have been able to do a kidney transplant and recovering gradually from the surgery. Thank you for the good work you're doing, may God bless you sir