Tenancy Agreement

It is signed before the tenant moves in, usually alongside payment of rent, agency fee, legal fee and caution fee.

During the tenancy it settles who fixes what, whether the tenant can sublet, what the caution fee covers and when it comes back. At the end it decides how much notice either side must give, whether the tenancy renews automatically, and on what terms.

The clause that matters most is notice. Section 13 of the Lagos State Tenancy Law 2011 sets statutory minimums where the agreement is silent, but it expressly allows the parties to agree their own period, and the agreed period binds both sides.

So a yearly tenant who would otherwise get six months can be reduced to thirty days by a clause they signed without reading. Equally, a landlord who agreed a long notice period is stuck with it. Read the clause before signing, because after signing it is simply the deal.

A condition inventory at the start, ideally with photographs, is the other thing that prevents disputes, particularly about the caution fee.

In everyday Nigerian usage the words are often interchangeable, and both create the right to occupy in exchange for rent.

Where a distinction is drawn, a lease tends to describe a longer term interest, frequently for commercial property, and is more likely to be a formal instrument that is stamped and sometimes registered. A tenancy agreement usually describes shorter residential arrangements.

The practical point is not the label. It is the term, the notice provisions, and whether the document was stamped where stamping was required.

A tenancy agreement cannot override statute where the statute is mandatory, and a clause purporting to let a landlord evict without a court order is not enforceable.

It also cannot help you if you never read it. The most common Nigerian tenancy complaint is a tenant discovering, at the worst moment, that they agreed to something they never noticed.