LD/DN/2026/10 · Desk Note · 2026-07-22

Power of Attorney Sales: When the Seller Isn't the Owner

The answer first: a power of attorney is not proof of ownership, and buying "a power of attorney" is not buying land. The Supreme Court put the principle beyond argument in Ude v. Nwara: a power of attorney transfers no interest in land. It is an instrument of agency — a warrant by which the donor authorises the donee to act in the donor's name. Whatever the donee signs under it, the transaction is the donor's transaction, the title that passes is the donor's title, and every defect in the donor's position passes with it.

So the diligence never stops at the donee. The person in front of you holding the power is, legally, a messenger — sometimes an honest one. The questions that matter run through him to the donor: is the donor the registry's holder of record, and if not, what chain connects them? Is the donor alive — because an ordinary power lapses on the donor's death, and the corridor has seen sales signed under the authority of the deceased? Was the power actually given, by the person it names, with signature and attestation that survive scrutiny? And does the power's wording authorise sale — a power to "manage," "let," or "oversee" the land is not a power to alienate it, and a donee who sells outside his warrant sells nothing.

Registration and form. A power of attorney dealing with land is a registrable instrument, and prudence treats registration as non-negotiable in a purchase: an unregistered power invites every argument about authenticity that a registered one forecloses. Where the power is given for value — the so-called irrevocable power "coupled with interest" — its terms and the transaction behind it deserve more scrutiny, not less, because the corridor's most common disguise is exactly this: a sale dressed as a power, done to skip the consent and perfection a real transfer requires. The dress does not change the body. A purchaser who takes a power of attorney instead of a deed of assignment has taken an agency instrument in place of a conveyance, and holds the land the way an agent holds it — which is to say, not at all.

The compounding case: family land. The lethal combination is a power of attorney over family land. A family can, validly, authorise a representative to sell — but the authority must come from those whose consent the law requires: the family head and principal members. A power signed by one branch, or by the head alone, carries the same defects as a sale by them would — voidable or void — now hidden one instrument deeper, where purchasers rarely look. The donee's confidence is not evidence. Trace the power to its givers, and the givers to their authority, exactly as you would trace a vendor's title.

The honest use of the instrument. None of this makes powers of attorney sinister. In a sound transaction, a registered, properly drawn power lets a diaspora owner sell through a sibling, or a family act through one representative, and the purchaser still receives a full deed executed under it — with consent and registration to follow. The instrument fails purchasers only when it is asked to be what it is not: the title itself. Which is the corridor's recurring disease in every form this series has treated — paper standing in for right — and the subject of the pillar, Why Land Transactions Die in Nasarawa.

This note is general information, not legal advice on any specific transaction. Offered land under a power of attorney? The desk's written 48-hour document verdict traces the power to its givers.