Financial Literacy 101: How Nigerian Govt Have Made Land Worthless Collateral

If you’ve been online in the last 24 hours, you must have seen that trending video
FCT Minister Nyesom Wike is having a heated clash with some Nigerian soldiers over a land property in Abuja.

Now, most people are just laughing and dropping memes…

But if you truly understand money, you should be thinking deeply.
Because that single incident yesterday explains why banks in Nigeria no longer accept land or buildings as collateral, and why so many businesses are quietly dying.

As your Financial Literacy Advocate, let me break it down in plain language

Imagine:
Mama Ngozi owns a piece of land in Abuja.
She built a nice plaza on it and has tenants paying her rent every month.

One day, she goes to the bank to get a ₦200 million loan to expand her business.
She submits her land documents as collateral.

The bank officer smiles and says:

“Madam, we can’t take this land o… what if the government revokes it tomorrow?”

Mama Ngozi laughs, “Ah! How can the government revoke my land when I have a C of O?”

But just yesterday, we all saw what happened.
The FCT Minister drove down to revoke a land, and soldiers stood their ground to defend it.
Both parties claimed “ownership”.

Now imagine if that same land was already used as collateral in a bank…

Tomorrow, the government can wake up and say this land belongs to them or to the military, or it was wrongly allocated, or it’s under revocation.

The moment that happens, that land becomes worthless paper.

And guess what?
The bank loses.
The business owner loses.
The economy loses.

That’s exactly why most Nigerian banks have stopped accepting landed properties as collateral, especially in Abuja and Lagos.
The risk is simply too high.

Sit down, let me mentor you on the implications you’re Not Seeing

Every time a government revokes land, cancels allocations, or disputes ownership, it quietly destroys:

When land ownership is unstable, the economy loses its foundation.

Because land is supposed to be the strongest form of collateral, but in Nigeria today, it has become the weakest.

Now that you get it….