Court Adjourns Hearing On Ownership Dispute Between FG, Ogun Govt Allottees

An Ogun State High Court sitting in Konape area of Abeokuta, the state capital, has adjourned till 19th October and 19th November, for further hearing on the controversy surrounding the true ownership of a parcel of land between an allottee of the Federal Ministry of Housing and Urban Development and the Ogun State government’s holders of a Certificate of Occupancy (C of O)

The parcel of land had become a subject of litigation betweenMichael Fasanu (SAN), who holds an Ogun State-approved C of O and Olatunji Sowunmi, who also holds a valid court judgment attesting that the land was a former federal government’s staff quarters disposed of in 2010 through the Federal Ministry of Housing and Urban Development.

When the matter first came up in 18th May, 2026, in suit number: AB/657/2025, Sowunmi’s counsel, Sina Sofola (SAN) sought a declaration that the property, measuring about 6, 174, 090 square metres and located at Quarter 192, Gbadebo Road in the Ibara Government Reserved Area (GRA) of Abeokuta, belonged to the Federal Government of Nigeria being its former staff quarters being maintained by the Federal Ministry of Housing and Urban Development.

In the statement of claim deposed to at the State High Court 7, presided over by Justice B.B. Adewole, Sowunmi is claiming that the defendant, Fasanu, unlawfully trespassed on the land which he purchased from the FG’s original allottee, one Tahirudeen Ogunmola, a retired officer of the Nigerian Prisons Service (NPS), now Nigeria Correctional Centre (NCC).

At the resumed hearing on Thursday, however, the claimant’s counsel,  Sofola, argued that it was not proper for the Ogun State government to have gone ahead to carve out part of the land and issue a C of O to the defendant, Fasanu, if it was established that the disputed property actually belonged to the Federal Government.

Meanwhile, Fasanu, who appeared in person at the court, challenged the claim, arguing that there was an existing judgment declaring the land to belong to the Ogun State government.

Fasanu argued that, from the evidence and exhibits available to the court, the land belonging to the state government was not transferred by the colonial administration to the federal government; hence, his C of O was valid.