Q:What is the status of the Certificate of Occupancy issued?
A.As already discussed, upon a successful application for a statutory right of occupancy, the applicant is issued with a Certificate of Occupancy over the land by the Governor of the state in which the land is situated.
The Certificate of occupancy does not vest title on a person, as erroneously believed by Banks and other financial institutions who usually demand for the Certificate as the only acceptable collateral to secure credit facilities granted by them.
Indeed a Certificate of Occupancy issued under the Act is only a prima facie evidence of title of the person in possession of the certificate and not an unimpeachable one and the same will give way to a better title, if challenged.
Although, under the Land Use Act upon a grant of a statutory right of occupancy, all existing rights to the use and occupation of the Land are extinguished, the Court have consistently held that a person who has a defective title over land cannot cure his defect by subsequently procuring a Certificate of Occupancy from the Governor.
Thus, any person without title to a parcel of land in respect of which the Certificate of Occupancy was issued acquires no right or interest which he did not have before the certificate was issued to him.
Similarly, a person deemed to have been issued with a statutory right of occupancy under the Land Use Act i.e. a person in whom land in an urban area was vested at the commencement of the Act on 29th March, 1978, cannot be divested of same by the mere issuance of a Certificate of Occupancy to another person, even where the person failed to object to the grant when publication was made in the newspaper inviting objections to the grant.
Furthermore, the Certificate of Occupancy cannot estop the courts from enquiring into the validity and existence of the title the person claimed to possess before the issuance of the certificate.
Because of the importance attached to Certificates of Occupancy by Banks and other financial institutions as security documents, the document has been a subject of forgery in recent times by unscrupulous persons with the attendant consequences of lost funds, running into billions of Naira, to the financial sector.
Thus, to obviate such losses, it is highly advisable for individuals and corporate organisations to verify the genuiness of Certificates of Occupancy presented to them in land or financial transactions, by employing the services of experienced professionals to conduct the said verification at the Land Registry.
A.O.S PRACTICE
