A ₦16m Sale, a 16-Year Wait and 14 Years in Prison: Lagos Couple Jailed for Selling a Dead Man’s Property
A court in Lagos has sent a couple to prison for 14 years each for selling a property that was never theirs to sell.
The sale happened in 2010. The judgment came this week.
Justice Mojisola Dada of the Lagos State Special Offences Court in Ikeja convicted Harry Uyanwanne and Oluwakemi Odia, also known as Kristein Uyanwanne, on Monday, 2 November 2026. The EFCC, which prosecuted the case, made the judgment public the next day. The court also ordered the couple to pay back ₦67,659,592 in full to the petitioner, Olusola Odemuyiwa.
What actually happened
The property sits at Plot 19, Murtala Mohammed Way, Ebute Meta, Oyingbo, on the Lagos mainland. It belonged to the beneficiaries of the estate of the late Dr Moshood Babatunde Odemuyiwa. In other words, it was a family inheritance.
In 2010, the couple sold it for ₦16 million. Their story to the buyer was simple: the beneficiaries had authorised them to sell. The beneficiaries had done no such thing.
The court found them guilty on three counts and sentenced each of them to:
- 3 years for conspiracy
- 1 year for stealing
- 10 years for obtaining money by false pretence
There was no option of a fine. They had pleaded not guilty, and the court discharged them on a fourth count of forgery.
Sixteen years. That is how long it took. A child born the year of that sale is now preparing for secondary school exams. The court got there in the end… but most families cannot afford to wait that long for justice.
The person nobody is talking about
Somebody paid ₦16m for that house in 2010. The reports say nothing about what happened to that buyer, whether they still live there, or whether they lost everything. The restitution order goes to the estate’s petitioner. Whoever handed over the money in good faith is, as far as the public record shows, a footnote.
That buyer could easily have been you. They probably met pleasant people, saw a real building, and received papers that looked official enough. The building was real. The authority to sell it was missing.
Why inherited property is a favourite trap
Walk through any older part of Lagos, from Ebute Meta and Yaba to Surulere and Mushin, and you will find houses still sitting in the name of someone who died years ago. The children are scattered. Some are abroad. One cousin has the keys, another has a photocopy of the C of O, and an uncle insists he is “the family representative”.
That confusion is exactly where fraud lives. When ownership is spread across several beneficiaries and nobody is watching closely, it is very easy for one person, or a stranger with a good story, to sell what belongs to everyone.
The same day, lawmakers talked about exactly this
By coincidence, on the same Monday as the judgment, the House of Representatives held a stakeholders’ conference in Abuja on a proposed National Real Estate Regulatory Authority.
Abdulmumini Jibrin, who chairs the House Committee on Housing and Habitat, said the authority would strengthen consumer protection, tackle unethical practices by some developers and protect would-be homeowners from fraudulent transactions. Ideas on the table include licensing developers, protected project accounts and digital property records that make ownership easier to check. The Minister of Housing and Urban Development, Muttaqha Darma, backed the plan.
It sounds good. I will believe it when I see it working. A bill is still a bill, and Nigeria has never been short of laws. What buyers need is a system where checking who owns a property is fast, cheap and reliable. Until that exists, the job of checking falls on you.
Also Read: What ₦210m Buys in Lagos: Real Homes, Estates and Investment Options as the Year Ends
Buying from a family or an estate? Five checks before you pay
- Ask for the grant. If the owner has died, only the executors named in a grant of probate (where there was a will) or the administrators named in letters of administration (where there was none) can sell. No grant, no deal.
- Have your own lawyer verify it. The grant can be confirmed at the Probate Registry of the High Court, and the title searched at the Lagos State Lands Bureau. Do not rely on the seller’s lawyer.
- Get every signature you need. Where there is more than one administrator, all of them should sign. If the family is quarrelling, walk away until they settle it.
- Talk to the neighbours. Someone who has lived next door for twenty years usually knows who the owner was and who the children are. It costs you nothing but an afternoon.
- Leave a paper trail. Pay into a traceable account against a signed agreement, never cash to an individual, and keep every receipt and message.
If you think you have already been sold a property by the wrong people, it is worth remembering how this case started. It began with a petition to the EFCC.
The bottom line
This judgment is a rare win, and it sends a clear message that property fraud in Lagos can end in prison. It also shows how slowly that message travels. Sixteen years passed between the sale and the sentence.
So do the checks before you pay. A grant, a search and a conversation with the neighbours cost a tiny fraction of what this family, and that unknown buyer, have been through.