THE IMPORTANCE OF GAZETTE WHEN BUYING A LAND.

A Gazette is the most bastardized word Land Sellers have peddled around to Purchasers and its the most confusing document that non-land experts have heard and know absolutely nothing about. They neither know what it looks like nor its percieved advantages or disadvantages and why it is one of the most important document you must be connected to unless your home could be demolished in future for it not being associated with it. Now before we talk about what a Gazette is, we have to Know what an Excision is and how they are both connected.

BRIEF HISTORY OF A GAZETTE: Before the Land-Use Act in 1978 was enacted, Traditional families who had so much land power under their control benefited from taking pleasure over all the rights given to them as land owners. Because of this mega-power they wielded with land, they gave out lands to individuals under a tenancy system for them to use the land either for fishing or farming while they still maintained control over the portion of the land given to the individual.

It wasn’t until the creation of Lagos Executive Development Board in the 1950s that individuals where now able to acquire land from the board directly in exchange for a sum of money instead of going to meet the traditional families to obtain land.  This led to the Traditional Families now splitting their lands to keep some for the family use and others for sale to individuals directly to compete with the Lagos Executive Development.

This system still made the Traditional Families total top dogs in exercising exclusive rights with lands they chose to sell and the ones they chose to keep. This eventually led to the birth of land speculation in Nigeria because lands were very expensive to purchase and difficult to obtain. Because of this and other ancillary reasons, it finally led to the promulgation of the Land Use Decree on the 28th of March, 1978 that vested all lands in every state of the Federation under the control of the State Governors. People could now directly obtain land from the Governor and the Governor could allocate land to the individual or Companies inquiring about land and issue certificate of occupancy to these people it has allocated land to.

The land use act coupled with other laws made it possible for the Governor who was now the owner of all lands in the state to actually have the power to Acquire more lands Compulsorily for its own public purpose to provide Amenities for the greater good of the citizens. The Acquisition of land from the Family by the Governor who is now the custodian of all lands in the state was now empowered by the Land Use Act to take the general control and management of all URBAN land and any area designated as an Urban area by the Governor shall be published in an Official Government Record book known as the Gazette.

Any area, community or village the Governor designates as an Urban Area is an Acquired land and the rest of the land it has not Acquired may be given back to the community it was acquired from in the form of an Excision.
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An Excision means basically taking a part from a whole and that part that has been excised, will be recorded and documented in the official government gazette of that state.”

So for example if in 1981, Victoria Island, Ikoyi and Lekki were all part of one big Community joined together called Oniru and it had no separation to know which area is called ikoyi, lekki or V.I then and it has an approximate total area square meters estimate of 100,000 square meters and the Government is interested in that area and decides to take 70,000 square meters for its self for its own personal use as an Urban Area or public purpose, it will record this acquisition in the official government gazette and also record that the remaining 30,000 square meters has been left alone for the traditional family to have and do with it whatever it pleases it to do.

This  my friends is the sweet relationship between a land under acquisition, an excision and gazette.

So now that we know that a Gazette is an Official record book where all special government details are spelt out, detailed and recorded, we would now focus onSpecial Gazettes that deal with Land purposes only and its features.

A gazette will show the communities or villages that have been granted excision and the number of acres or hectares of land that the government has given to them. It is within those excised acres or hectares that the traditional family is entitled to sell its lands to the public and not anything outside those hectares of land given or excised to them. If they decide to sell anything outside the excised land, then that land is under acquisition by the government and it is a very bad land to buy

Special Features of a Gazette include the following:

The Cover of the Gazette must include the Number of the Gazette, Page of the Gazette and Volume of the Gazette. It must also Include the Date and Location it was issued
1. The first page of a Gazette must have the following unless it is a dubious or fake Gazette
a. The Logo of the Country and the inscription of the title “ LAGOS STATE OF NIGERIA OFFICIAL GAZETTE”
b. Underneath it must have the Number, Volume, Page, Date and the Location it was signed into law e.g No 26 in pages 200 to 291, Volume 87 dated 14th of August 2011 and have the contents of the list of the Villages, Settlements and parcels of land excised back to the community.

2. The Inner pages will show the following:

Credit: Barrister Mattew Attah