Unregistered Deed of Assignment: Do You Actually Own the Land?

The five-second version: Registration is not what transfers ownership; your deed does that. So an unregistered deed doesn't mean you own nothing. But it does mean that if you ever have to prove your ownership in court, you walk in holding a document whose admissibility two Supreme Court decisions currently disagree about. One says it's admissible to prove title. The other, decided later, says it isn't. Nobody knows which one your judge will follow. You don't want to be the case that settles it. LegalDoc drafts and perfects Deeds of Assignment — stamping, consent, registration — so the question never comes up.

Now the long version:

There's a drawer in Nigerian homes that I think about a lot.

It has a deed of assignment in it. Signed, witnessed, maybe photocopied a few times. The land was paid for in full — sometimes decades ago. The family built on it, lived on it, farmed it, passed it down. And in all that time, nobody ever took the document to a Land Registry.

If that drawer is in your house, you've probably had the same conversation with yourself: it's fine. We've been here twenty years. Everybody knows this is our land.

Here's the honest answer, and it's more interesting than either the panic or the complacency.

First, kill the biggest myth: registration doesn't give you ownership

A lot of people — including some who really should know better — talk as though registration is what makes land yours. It isn't.

Your deed of assignment is what transfers the interest. It's the instrument. When a valid deed is executed and delivered, the seller's interest passes to you. That's the transaction.

Registration does something different and narrower. It puts the world on notice that you hold that interest, and it sorts out priority between competing claims to the same land. It's a public record, not a source of title. The Land Registry doesn't give you the land — it records that you already have it.

Same with stamping. Stamp duty is a revenue matter under the Stamp Duties Act. It isn't a title matter either.

So no — an unregistered deed doesn't mean you own nothing. Anyone who tells you that is oversimplifying, and usually because they're about to sell you something.

But hold on. Because here's where it gets genuinely difficult.

The question that actually matters: can you prove it?

Owning land and being able to prove you own land are two completely different problems, and only the second one gets tested.

Nobody ever asks about your deed while things are peaceful. The question arrives on the worst day — when a competing buyer surfaces with a document of their own, when the seller's children decide the sale never happened, when a developer starts clearing your plot, when a bank wants the land as security, when the family wants to sell and can't.

On that day, you're in court, and someone stands up and says your deed shouldn't be admitted in evidence at all.

And this is where the Nigerian position gets genuinely strange.

The rule everyone learned

For decades, the position looked settled, and it went like this.

Virtually every state in Nigeria has a Land Instruments Registration Law. They're broadly uniform, and they say that a registrable instrument which has not been registered cannot be pleaded or given in evidence in any court as affecting land.

The courts applied that faithfully for years. An unregistered registrable instrument was inadmissible to prove title. It could still be let in for a narrow purpose — to show that a transaction existed, and that money changed hands — but not to establish that the land was yours.

That's the rule most Nigerian lawyers were taught. It's the rule most articles on this subject still repeat as though nothing has happened.

Then, in December 2017, the Supreme Court blew it up

In Benjamin v Kalio, a full court of seven Justices of the Supreme Court took a hard look at Section 20 of the Rivers State Land Instruments (Preparation and Registration) Law — the provision barring unregistered instruments from being pleaded or admitted.

And they asked a question nobody had properly asked before: who gave a State House of Assembly the power to legislate about evidence?

Because since 1979, "evidence" has been item 23 on the Exclusive Legislative List. Under the Constitution, only the National Assembly can make law on matters in that list. Admissibility of evidence in Nigerian courts is governed by the Evidence Act — a federal statute.

The Court's conclusion, delivered by Eko JSC, was blunt. In purporting to control what a court may admit in evidence, the Rivers State law had trespassed into exclusively federal territory. That provision could not stand.

The effect was seismic. An unregistered registrable land instrument is not admissible to prove title. However, such unregistered instrument is admissible to prove payment of money and coupled with possession. It may give right to an equitable interest enforceable by specific performance. In other words, an unregistered registrable land instrument is admissible in evidence to prove, not only the payment and receipt of the purchase price, but also the EQUITABLE INTEREST of the purchaser in the subject land..

If the story ended there, this would be a short and cheerful article.

It didn't end there

In April 2019 — barely sixteen months later — the Supreme Court decided Abdullahi v Adetutu.

A regular panel of five Justices. And it restated the old rule. An unregistered registrable instrument, inadmissible to prove title but an unregistered registrable instrument will only be admissible in evidence if it is tendered to show that there was a transaction between a lessor and a lessee, it will be admissible as a purchase receipt.

The remarkable part is what the judgment doesn't do. It doesn't mention Benjamin v Kalio. It doesn't engage with the Constitution. It doesn't address the Evidence Act or the Exclusive Legislative List argument at all. It simply recites the pre-2017 line of cases as though the seven-Justice decision from the year before had never happened.

Legal academics have been fairly pointed about this. The argument runs that Benjamin was a full court of seven, Abdullahi a regular panel of five, Benjamin has never been overruled, and on ordinary principles of precedent Benjamin should prevail. The Commonwealth Law Bulletin has carried more than one article making exactly that case.

That's probably right. But "probably right" is not the same as "settled."

So where does that leave your deed?

Here is the honest position, stated plainly, because you deserve it straight.

You very likely own the land. Your deed transferred the interest. Registration was never the source of your title.

But your ability to prove it in a contested case depends on which line of authority the court in front of you follows. One Supreme Court decision says your unregistered deed comes in. Another says it doesn't. Both are Supreme Court decisions. Neither has been formally overruled by the other.

Your lawyer can argue Benjamin. It's the stronger argument, on the better reasoning, from the bigger panel. But you'll be arguing it — which means time, money, and an outcome that turns partly on how a particular judge reads a particular conflict.

And even on the most favourable view, admissibility only gets your document through the door. It doesn't win the case. You still have to prove your title on the merits, and you're now doing it while your opponent's lawyer spends the morning attacking your paperwork instead of your substance.

You do not want to be the case that settles this. That's the whole argument for perfection, and it's enough on its own.

What "perfecting" your title actually means

Nigerians throw the word perfection around loosely. It means three specific things, done in order.

Stamping. Your deed is assessed and stamped under the Stamp Duties Act. This is a revenue step, and it's also a practical gateway — a Registry generally won't register an unstamped instrument, and unstamped documents carry their own evidential difficulties.

Governor's Consent. Under Section 22 of the Land Use Act, where the land is held under a statutory right of occupancy, you cannot lawfully alienate it without the Governor's consent. This is not optional and it is not a formality. It's the step most transactions skip, and it's the one that most often turns a "completed" purchase into a wobbly one years later.

Registration. The deed is registered at the State Land Registry, entered on the public record, and your interest becomes discoverable by anyone who searches. This is what protects you from the competing buyer who searched, found nothing, and bought in good faith.

Skip all three and you own land the way you own a secret. Do all three and you own land the way the system recognises.

"But it's been twenty years"

The most common objection, and I understand it. The deed is old. The seller may be dead. The land has been built on. Perfecting now feels like reopening something that's been quietly fine.

Two honest thoughts.

Time doesn't cure a registration gap. It just delays the day someone tests it — and the longer you wait, the harder the practical work gets. Witnesses die. The seller's family scatters. Records deteriorate. The documents you'd need to support an application get harder to assemble every year.

But time does change what's possible, and sometimes it changes it in your favour. Long, open, undisturbed possession is not nothing in Nigerian land law — it isn't title on its own, but it's evidence, and it forms part of the picture a court looks at. Nigerian law recognises several distinct ways of proving title to land, and a documentary instrument is only one of them.

Which is the real point: an old unregistered deed plus decades of visible possession is a much better position than an old unregistered deed alone. If that's you, you're not in crisis. You're in a position worth tidying up before someone forces you to.

What to do, depending on where you are

Buying now, nothing signed. Do it properly from the start. Search the Registry, confirm the land isn't under acquisition, verify the seller's authority, then a Contract of Sale, then a Deed of Assignment, then stamping, consent and registration. The whole chain. Perfection is dramatically cheaper as part of a live transaction than as an archaeology project in fifteen years.

Deed signed, nothing else done. Start the perfection process now, while the seller is alive, reachable and cooperative. Their signature and cooperation are worth more to you today than they will ever be worth again.

Old deed, long possession, seller gone. Get a property lawyer to look at what you have and what's recoverable. It's more complicated, but it's frequently fixable, and "complicated" is a much better problem than "contested."

Someone is already challenging you. Then this article is not your document. Get a litigator, today, and take the drawer with you.

Where LegalDoc comes in

Most of the drawer-deeds in Nigeria started life as a template someone forwarded on WhatsApp, filled in by hand, signed at a kitchen table. Half the problem starts there — before registration was ever the issue.

LegalDoc's Deed of Assignment is drafted for Nigerian land transactions properly: correct parties, real recitals, a consideration and receipt clause that actually does its job, the habendum, the covenants, and an execution and attestation block built to survive a challenge. You complete it through a guided form and download it in Word and PDF, ready to sign.

We also handle Contracts of Sale for the stage before completion, when your deposit needs protecting and the seller needs binding.

Straight about what we are: LegalDoc is a documents and registration partner, not a law firm. We get the instrument right, which is where most of these disasters begin. For the Registry search, the Governor's Consent application and the registration itself — the perfection chain — engage a Nigerian property lawyer, and for anything contested, a litigator. The document is our part. Do it right, and the rest gets much easier.

Start here: legaldoc.ng, WhatsApp, or hello@legaldoc.ng.

Frequently asked questions

Does an unregistered deed of assignment mean I don't own the land?

No. Your deed transfers the interest — registration doesn't create title, it records and protects it. What an unregistered deed costs you is proof, and only when someone contests you. That's a smaller problem than "you own nothing" and a much bigger one than "it's fine."

So can I use my unregistered deed in court or not?

That is, right now, a genuinely contested question. Benjamin v Kalio — a full seven-Justice Supreme Court in 2017 — held that state laws barring unregistered instruments from evidence are unconstitutional, because "evidence" sits on the Exclusive Legislative List and only the National Assembly can legislate on it. Then Abdullahi v Adetutu in 2019, a five-Justice panel, restated the old rule without engaging with Benjamin at all. Benjamin is the stronger authority on precedent. But you'd be arguing it, and that's exactly the position you don't want to be in.

What was the old rule, exactly?

An unregistered registrable instrument was inadmissible to prove title, but could be admitted for the limited purpose of showing a transaction existed and that money was paid. So even on the old rule, your deed proved you paid. It just couldn't prove the land was yours.

Is registration the same as Governor's Consent?

No, and conflating them is common. Consent, under Section 22 of the Land Use Act, is the Governor's approval of the alienation itself. Registration is entering the instrument on the Land Registry's record. Stamping is a revenue step. Three separate things, all part of perfecting your title, none of them interchangeable.

My land has no C of O. Can I still register the deed?

That depends on what the underlying title actually is — excised and gazetted family land behaves differently from land under a statutory right of occupancy, and land still under government acquisition is a different problem entirely. This is exactly the question to put to a property lawyer before you spend money, not after.

Can I register a deed if the seller has died?

Harder, not always impossible. Much depends on what the deed contains, what supporting documents exist, and whether the seller's estate can be brought in. It's the strongest argument in this article for perfecting while your seller is alive and reachable.

Does long possession protect me?

It helps, and it's not nothing — Nigerian law recognises more than one route to proving title, and documentary evidence is only one of them. Long, open, undisturbed possession forms part of the picture. But it's evidence, not a substitute for a properly perfected instrument, and it's a weaker place to argue from than a registered deed.

I bought from a family. Does that change anything?

Enormously — and it's a separate problem from registration. Who signed matters as much as whether it was registered. A sale by principal members without the family head joining in is void from the outset, and no amount of registration fixes a void sale.

Is it too late to fix a deed from the 1990s?

Usually not, but it gets harder every year as witnesses, sellers and records disappear. Get someone to look at what you actually have before you assume either the best or the worst.

LegalDoc provides ready-to-use Nigerian legal documents drafted by qualified Nigerian lawyers. This article is general information reflecting the position as at July 2026, not legal advice — and on the specific question of admissibility, the law is genuinely unsettled between two Supreme Court decisions. LegalDoc is not a law firm or a substitute for legal advice.