Section 28 of the Land Use Act 1978 gives every State Governor — and, in the Federal Capital Territory, the FCT Minister — the unilateral power to revoke any right of occupancy 'for overriding public interest', and the holder's only remedy is compensation for *unexhausted improvements* (buildings and crops), never the bare land. From 2003 onward, a generation of governors and one famously pugnacious FCT minister discovered that this single section was the most powerful political instrument in Nigerian sub-national government. Overnight revocations became a recurring Fourth Republic spectacle — sometimes a clean-up, sometimes a political purge, sometimes both — and the courts, hemmed in by s.28 and the *Nkwocha v Governor of Anambra* (1984) doctrine of judicial deference, almost always upheld them.
The defining episode was Nasir el-Rufai's tenure as Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (July 2003 – May 2007) under Obasanjo. Armed with the Abuja Master Plan (1979) and a presidential mandate to 'restore Abuja', el-Rufai revoked over 4,000 plots of land for non-development, breach of allocation terms, or distortion of the Master Plan, and demolished an estimated 800 structures — including the homes of serving ministers, senators, the Vice-President's wife's property, and entire informal settlements such as Maitama Extension, Mpape and Garki Village. The revocations were published in the *FCT Gazette* in waves, and beneficiaries learnt of their loss from the morning newspapers. Court challenges piled up; *Ona v FCDA* and a string of FCT High Court rulings between 2005 and 2010 upheld the revocations where the Minister had complied with s.28's notice requirement, and set aside only those done without publication. The political cost to Obasanjo was real — Abuja's elite never forgave el-Rufai — but the legal precedent was set: a Nigerian land title is only as secure as the next gazette.
The Lagos sequence is the most-studied. In July 2003, newly inaugurated Governor Bola Tinubu revoked en bloc the Certificates of Occupancy issued by his predecessor Brigadier-General Buba Marwa (1996–1999, the Abacha-era military administrator), on the grounds that Marwa's allocations had been made without proper Executive Council process or had been clustered among Marwa associates. Thousands of C of Os over Lekki, Victoria Island Extension and Ikeja GRA were voided in a single Lands Bureau notice. *Marwa-era allottees* litigated for a decade; most settled for revalidation at higher fees. In August 2012, Governor Babatunde Fashola revoked sub-allocations within the Lekki Free Trade Zone for non-performance, recovering land that became the Dangote Refinery site. In November 2021, Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu revoked Lekki foreshore allocations along the Eko Atlantic axis for non-development, freeing land for the Lekki Deep Sea Port back-of-port facilities. The Lagos pattern is fiscal-development-led: revoke, re-tender at oil-boom prices, fund the budget.
The Northern and Niger Delta versions are more nakedly political. In Kaduna State (2015–2019), el-Rufai — by then Governor — revoked hundreds of plots allocated by his predecessor Ramalan Yero, set up the Kaduna Geographic Information Service (KADGIS) to digitise titles, and re-allocated through open tender. In Rivers State, Governor Rotimi Amaechi (2007–2015) revoked Peter Odili-era allocations across the new Government Reservation Areas in Port Harcourt; his successor Nyesom Wike (2015–2023) in turn revoked *Amaechi-era* allocations in November 2015, citing 'fraudulent' processing — a documented case of revocations cancelling revocations between consecutive PDP governors. In Cross River, Governor Liyel Imoke (2010) revoked Tinapa-belt and Calabar Free Trade Zone allocations from Donald Duke-era allottees. In Anambra, Governor Willie Obiano (2014) revoked Peter Obi-era industrial-layout plots in Onitsha and Nnewi. In Akwa Ibom, Governor Godswill Akpabio (2008) revoked Uyo capital-city plots from Victor Attah-era allottees to assemble land for the Tropicana Entertainment City project. The pattern across both regions is consistent: a new governor arrives, gazettes the predecessor's allocations as void, and the courts defer.
Why do the revocations stick? Three legal-structural reasons. First, s.28(7) of the Land Use Act requires only that the revocation notice be served and published — no judicial review of the *substance* of 'overriding public interest' is contemplated. The Supreme Court in *Foreign Finance Corporation v LSDPC* (1991) and *Goldmark v Ibafon* (2012) confirmed that courts may police the *procedure* of revocation but not the Governor's judgment of public interest. Second, compensation under s.29 is capped at the value of unexhausted improvements assessed by the Land Use and Allocation Committee — never market value of the land — making revocation a fiscally cheap exercise for the State. Third, the C of O is a derivative title from the Governor, not an allodial fee simple; revocation is, in legal theory, the trustee resuming what was always his. The combined effect is a sub-national pen-stroke power without analogue in most jurisdictions: the United States's eminent-domain at *market value*, India's *Land Acquisition Act 2013* with *four times market value* in rural areas, even apartheid South Africa's pre-1994 expropriation regime all required higher compensation than s.29 of the Land Use Act prescribes.
The political economy this creates is the real story. Every Nigerian state has, between 2003 and 2025, become a jurisdiction where title security depends on political continuity, not on registration. A Lagos plot bought in 1998 was at risk in 2003, a Kaduna plot bought in 2014 was at risk in 2015, an FCT plot bought in 2002 was at risk in 2004. The market priced this in: Lagos's *Omo Onile* foundation levy (covered in Act IV of the Omo Onile series) functions partly as revocation insurance — a family deed and a settled family levy give a buyer a fallback claim grounded in customary law that no governor's pen can erase. The 2,282 Certificates of Occupancy issued by Lagos in its record year (2016) are a related symptom: against a backlog of 3 to 4 million untitled parcels, the State formally titles fewer than 0.1 % per year. Most Lagos land will never be formally titled within the lifetime of its current owners. The Land Use Act produced a parallel-tenure regime — Governor's title for the few, family title for the many — and forty-seven years of revocations have entrenched, not resolved, the split.
The Fourth Republic has therefore made the Governor's Pen — and, in the FCT, the Minister's Pen — one of the defining offices of Nigerian property. It is not abused in the strict sense; the law authorises it. But it leaves Nigerian land insecure in a way that no constitutional reform has yet addressed, and it explains why, in city after city, the registered C of O has come to mean less than the signed family deed.