After building his house in the Lekki area of Lagos State, Emmanuel Ometoruwa decided he would not invest in real estate in the metropolitan city again. But that was until he met a realtor offering a friendly real estate deal.

Mr Ometoruwa, an engineer who lives abroad but visits Nigeria regularly, decided to tag along with the realtor.

Sarah Olawoye was more than a realtor to him. She lived rent-free in his house in Lekki. It did not end there; Miss Olawoye and Mr Ometoruwa belonged to the same Christian denomination and worshipped in the same church.

Mr Ometoruwa met Miss Olawoye through his wife. He was looking for someone to occupy and help maintain his house since he is not living in Nigeria. On the other hand, Miss Olawoye, who was living on Lagos Mainland, desperately needed a place on the Island to ease commuting to work there.

Mr Ometoruwa offered her accommodation, a relationship cemented by their religious affiliation.

Not quite long, Miss Olawoye convinced Mr Ometoruwa to acquire plots of land from a real estate company she worked for as a realtor and canvasser. The company’s managing director told PREMIUM TIMES she has since left the organisation.

Engagement with West Spring Estate Limited

Convinced by the proposal of his then-tenant and churchmate, Mr Ometoruwa formally approached West Spring Estate Limited in December 2022 to purchase two commercial plots of land.

West Spring Estate Limited, whose office is on the 5th Floor, Royal Cedar Building, Km 25, Lekki-Epe Expressway, Ajiwe, Ajah, Lagos, claims on its Facebook page that it is committed to bringing affordable landed property to real estate investors in Nigeria, especially in Lagos State.

David Amoye is the real estate agent’s managing director and lead promoter. He co-owns the company with his wife. He also owns another real estate company, Whitegate Homes, which, he said, has a “corporate governance structure” in place.

The two commercial plots of land titled B1 and B2, located in Hacienda Estate in Orofun Community in the Ibeju-Lekki area of the state, cost Mr Ometoruwa N45 million, he told PREMIUM TIMES. Documents and receipts reviewed by this newspaper also confirmed the payments.

In its contractual agreement with Mr Ometoruwa, the company said he must complete the payment of the total sum on or before 30 October 2023 to acquire the plots. He completed the payments in April of the same year.

The company issued him an electronic receipt dated 14 April 2023 upon completion of the payments.

He paid the first instalment of N10 million on 30 December 2022 via a Zenith Bank account belonging to the company. Other subsequent payments were made in eight tranches to complete the payment based on the evidence of payment sighted by this newspaper.

Besides the sum of N45 million for the two commercial plots, Mr Ometoruwa also paid the sum of N100,000 for the deed of assignment, N1.6 million for the survey of the plots and N3 million as an estate development fee, which brought the total sum to approximately N50 million.

“I was made to understand that the Lagos State Government approved the title of the land,” Mr Ometoruwa told this newspaper, saying he had already begun to arrange for the purchase of two residential plots in the estate until something told him to pause.

Where are the plots of land?

More than a year after fulfilling West Spring Estate Limited’s requirements for acquiring the two commercial plots of land, Mr Ometoruwa has yet to lay his hands on them. There has yet to be an allocation.

Mr Ometoruwa said he had already imported all the construction materials for the project on the plots into the country. They now lay in waste in Lagos as he has yet to take possession of the plots for the building project. According to him, he has also paid millions of naira for the building plan, yet there is no land in sight to erect the proposed structures.

There is more to the land. When Mr Ometoruwa took the survey plan of the plots of land he received from Mr Amoye to the Land Registry Office in Alausa, Ikeja, Lagos State, he realised that no such title existed.

Responding to Mr Ometoruwa’s finding that the land title was not genuine, Mr Amoye said, “A government gazette covers the land.”

A real estate agent, Wale Ogeleyinbo, explained to PREMIUM TIMES that the land being under government gazette only means that the land is “free from government encumbrances and that whoever is interested in it can acquire it and process the Certificate of Occupancy for it.”

Mr Amoye acknowledged that Mr Ometoruwa bought and duly paid for the two commercial plots of land, along with other relevant fees for the survey, deed of assignment and estate development. Mr Ometoruwa has the survey of the land, in addition to the deed of assignment and the contract of sale, in his possession. But he does not have a land allocation letter.

Again, when PREMIUM TIMES asked Mr Amoye why Mr Ometoruwa could not begin construction on the plots he duly paid for, he said, ”The land has been allocated, but you cannot build now until we complete what we are doing. You can do a corner piece and then do a dwarf fence, which is the prototype approved for the estate.”

He said one of the terms of the agreement for the sale of the plots is that the buyer will have to wait for the place to open for construction or development to start building on them.

By this, Mr Amoye means that sand filling of the road network and construction of drainages, alongside other major infrastructures, including the perimeter fencing of the estate, must have been done before buyers can take possession and develop their plots. He did not provide the timeframe for the completion of the site preparation.

He, however, said the realtor who marketed the land to Mr Ometoruwa probably left out the subscriber’s guidelines while briefing him about the transaction out eagerness to close the deal and get their own commission.

Such a term does not exist in the Contract of Sales and Deed of Assignment between West Spring Estate Limited and Mr Ometoruwa, which this newspaper reviewed.

But Mr Amoye said a document called subscriber’s development and construction terms and guidelines, stipulating the conditions for starting construction on individual plots in the estate, was issued to prospective clients.

“All subscribers to our estates are given a copy of this document to go through before subscribing to our estates. His representative (Sarah Olawoye) is aware of this document, and I believe the same was communicated to him,” Mr Amoye said. Asked to Mr Amoye’s claim of issuance of a subscriber’s guidelines, Mr said, “There was nothing like that.”

This newspaper made several efforts to speak to Miss Olawoye, the realtor who marketed the plots of land to Mr Ometoruwa through her last known telephone number. The telephone line was switched off. The text message sent to the phone number also returned ‘unsent’. All efforts to contact her via her Facebook also proved futile.

‘Client should officially demand a refund’

There has been so much back-and-forth over the land transaction, according to Mr Amoye, including the arrest of some staff members of West Spring Estate Limited and an alleged invasion of his residence somewhere in Lekki by operatives of the Delta State Police Command, Asaba, at the instance of Mr Ometoruwa.

He also said his bank accounts, that of his wife and a former business partner, were frozen by the police. He said he obtained a court order unfreezing his accounts and sued the police for assault and harassment.

Mr Amoye said since, from all indications, Mr Ometoruwa has lost interest in the transaction, he should write to the company to demand a refund rather than go through third parties.

“Once he communicates officially to us, we will respond and then make payment, which can either be a one-off thing or instalments,” he told this newspaper.

Mr Ometoruwa, however, said he would not write any official letter demanding a refund. He said Mr Amoye knows the account through which he made the transfers to West Spring Estate Limited, saying he should credit him immediately, without any delay.

“He is expected to refund my money,” Mr Ometoruwa said, adding, “If he has allocated the land, we should by now have built a small fencing around it to take possession.”

“I cannot write a letter to him. He needs to come to the police station when invited and agree on the mode and time of refunding my N50 million and the additional costs I have incurred for all materials imported, building structure plan etc. up to N20 million. He will refund N70 million immediately to me in one transaction,” he said.

Like West Spring Estate, Mr Amoye’s Whitegate Homes is also enmeshed in another land sale controversy with one Adetoun Adeojo, who has yet to acquire her plot of land, which she paid N35 million for in 2022. She has yet to get a refund either, according to a report by the Foundation for Investigative Journalism (FIJ).

Mr Ometoruwa’s case is similar to Mrs Adeojo’s. They both paid for plots of land to companies owned and promoted by Mr Amoye. Neither of them has gotten the allocation for one reason or another, and the company is not forthcoming with a refund.

Fraud and real estate in Lagos

Controversies like this are rampant in the real estate business across many Nigerian cities.

Many prospective land buyers have lost vast sums of money and even developed property on disputed land to scams.

Mr Ogeleyinbo, who operates in the Lagos real estate ecosystem, warned prospective clients to always conduct due diligence before entering into any land acquisition transaction or property purchase in the state.

Many real estate agents, including those with registered companies, often defraud buyers by selling plots of land with fake or forged documents.

Some sell the same piece of land to as many buyers as they can dupe, while some, especially some real estate companies, lack genuine transfer of ownership documents from the actual landowners to sell.

In a publication by Nairametrics in May, the Lagos State Real Estate Regulatory Agency (LASRERA) said it had received 1,702 real estate fraud cases since it was founded four years ago by the Lagos State Government.

LASRERA, established in 2020 to regulate real estate practice in the state, said it had recovered N478.13 million and 18 properties from fraudulent real estate practitioners, returning them to their rightful owners over the past four years.

The Commissioner for Housing in the state, Moruf Akinderu-Fatai, urged residents to be vigilant to avoid falling victim to fake and fraudulent estate agents. He admonished them to patronise only registered real estate companies and agents for their real estate needs.