Man in trouble for buying land from ‘ghost’

Investigation Department have arrested a manager with Exxon Mobil (name withheld) for allegedly buying a plot of land in 2001 from a woman who died in1993.

The police said they were not convinced that the man was not a part of a larger syndicate that specialised in such malpractice, especially since the man possesses a valid Certificate of Occupancy and sales documents to back up his claim.

PUNCH METRO gathered that investigation by policemen later revealed that the C of O was allegedly taken from a file copy in land office in Alausa, Ikeja. But luck ran out on those that took the file copy of the C of O because all the documents in the office had been computerised.

Ironically, it was the manager who wrote a petition to the police against the children of the late principal of Holy Child College, Obalende, Mrs. Adeoti Awolaja, who owned the land, located at Lekki Phase 1.

It was learnt that the children of the deceased had asked the manager to vacate the land, insisting that their mother did not sell the property before she died.

But the manager accused the children of cloning his C of O, maintaining that he was the legal owner of the land.

A policeman, who spoke with our correspondent on condition of anonymity, said the complainant turned to suspect when the land office wrote to inform the police that the C of O the manager possessed was a file copy and must have been taken from the office illegally.

He said, ”Not only that, we discovered that indeed, it was Mrs. Awolaja that owned the land and she died in 1993, whereas the man bought the land in 2003. We also saw that the manager wrote a cheque of N5m for the land and curiously, the bank, Ecobank, did not take the withdrawer‘s photograph and even the International passport the bank accepted was thumb printed.

”The woman who owned the land was lettered and we did not see why she should thumb print her International passport, when she signed the C of O that both parties presented.

”Having discovered all these, we confronted the manager, but he could not present his lawyer, estate agents and the woman he bought the land from.”

However, during a chance encounter with the manager, he told our correspondent that as far as he was concerned, the sale of the land was done legally.

”It was handled by my lawyer and my estate agent. All the documents were verified by my lawyer and I saw the woman myself in my lawyer‘s office before I paid the money in 2001. It was shocking to me now when I was presented with the fact that the woman died in 1993,” the manager said.

He said he would not mind negotiating with the children of the deceased to find a way out of the problem. ”I finished my house on that land in 2004. I specifically requested for Lekki because it is somehow regulated by the government and I did not want all these land speculators‘ problem. I don‘t know why this is happening,” he said.

But the spokesman of the FCID, Friday Achibong, who confirmed the manager‘s arrest, said the manager had been arraigned in court and is still being remanded in police custody.