Most times, I do get asked this question a lot, especially from couples seeking divorce or separation. They are always enquiring to know who owns what property and how it will be shared amongst them.

Some of the most likely scenarios could be that the wife bought the land and the husband paid for the erection of the structure, or the wife erected the structure on the land the man bought, or both the husband and wife contributed money to the purchase of land and its building. 

This issue has been provided answers to by law but because of the nature of our society where some cultures still do not permit women to own properties, especially landed property, and the false narrative that whatever property a wife acquired while in “her husband’s house” belongs to the husband is still making this question an everyday issue which lawyers and relationship counselors are already tired of answering. 

What the law says; 

When the wife and the husband acquire a property together, ie they both contributed financially or materially to the acquisition of such a property, they are deemed at law to be joint owners or co-owners of such property; it does not matter what each contributed or the magnitude or otherwise of the contribution of any of the partners, they are both deemed to co-owner such property. 

Joint or Co-ownership means that both owners own the whole of the property and they both have equal rights to the property. By this legal principle of co-ownership, If one owner dies the property will pass or devolve to the living partner. 

A spouse (be it the man or the wife) cannot by law legally assign the property in a will to another person, (not even to their kids) while the other spouse is still alive unless they both agreed that at the time of a partner’s demise, the property should be assigned to a third party. 

The problem as to how a property jointly owned by a husband and a wife is to be shared as stated earlier, always arises when the spouses are facing divorce, dissolution of marriage, or separation. Each of the co-owners is always laying claim to be the rightful owner of the property, basing their individual arguments on the fact that his or her contribution to the acquisition of the property is of a larger proportion compared to what the other partner contributed, but the law says that both of them own the property equally, in as much as they both contributed significantly to the acquisition of the property, it is insignificant as to what proportion they both contributed. 

What happens to a property jointly owned by the husband and wife when they are facing divorce or separation?
The court or the partners can adopt any of the following approach; 

1. The court can order that the property be sold or rented out and the proceeds shared between the partners or that the proceeds be used in taking care of their kid(s). Or
2. The court can order that the property be transferred to their child(ren). Or 
3. The court can order that the spouse keeping custody of the child(ren) keep the property. Or 
4. One of the spouses can voluntarily relinquish his/her rights of ownership to the other partner ie letting the other partner have and keep the property. 

On the final note, it is the law that whosoever person’s name is on the legal documents of a property; ie the deed of assignment or the deed of conveyance or the deed of mortgage is the legal owner of such property. Therefore, it is advisable that when husband and wife acquire a property together that their both names be on the legal documents of such property. Their (both) names should all be written in full in the document and not Mr. & Mrs. XYZ. For instance, Instead of Mr. and Mrs. John Doe, It should rather be Mr. John Doe  & Mrs. Jane Doe, If the wife is yet to legally adopt the husband’s last name, the wife should then use her maiden name in the legal documents of the property, written in full, that’s how each person’s interest and ownership in the property will be legally protected.

I get this question a lot: “How do you have time to do all that you do?”

My response:  I work hard daily to be in charge of seconds, minutes and hours of the day. And what that means is simple: I PLAN. In secondary school, I took 15 subjects (WAEC recommended 9) because I felt Economics was nice even as Further Mathematics was super-amazing. So, I took both. But since WAEC would not allow more than 9, I wrote GCE while in secondary to pass Economics, Commerce, etc. With simple time management, the extra academic load did not break me. In the bank, I ran two master’s degree programs and a correspondence doctoral program while working full time. What was the secret? Planning.

The biggest professional victory is victory over your time. If you master your time, you will win your future. Greatness has been achieved, not because of special talent, but rather due to total dedication, perseverance and commitment through the mastering of time. A man who cannot manage his seconds will wander through the boundless of time.

If you take 5 minutes to plan your day, you could save (or improve productivity by more than) 3 hours in a day. But having the discipline for those special 5 minutes is where outperformance comes. It is like a brilliant student in an exam: you first scan the questions, and then decide within yourself how to allocate time!

What is tomorrow going to look like? Take 5 minutes to think what it would look like before you sleep or if you prefer, in the early hours of tomorrow, plan it. Remember: write the important tasks of the day down, and as the day flies, adjust if necessary.

Do not wake up with no plan on the day’s agenda. If you do that, time will BOSS you because the clock does not stop.

They have all failed us. If not, by now, all of them would be out of jobs. Yes, how do you explain the unexplainable: “The head of Nigeria’s petroleum company told a legislative committee this week that a 4-kilometer pipeline from the Forcados export terminal has been used to steal oil for nine years, resulting in the theft of hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil per day.” People, how did they know when it was installed? Carbon dating or what?

When you lose 600,000 barrels of oil every day (about $48 million per day at $80 per barrel), it means you have no systems. I worked in NNPC Owaza flow station in my first year internship in FUT Owerri. I followed again in the Nigerian Gas Company of NNPC in Moscow Rd, PHC, and was in the team helping to supply Aba glass and ceramic industries hydrocarbons. Later, I did industrial attachment  in Shell Yenagoa flow station in Bayelsa state. In my small experience in the oil and gas industry, pressure matters and metering  was sacrosanct.

If the pressure in the pipeline drops, you suspect a leak. But if there is no drop in pressure, your outbound metering number should match the one at the customer side. So, if you deliver 10 cubic feet of gas from Owaza flow station to Aba Glass, at the end of the week when you travel to Aba to read their meter, it should show the same 10 cubic feet. If there is a variance, it is possibly a leak and that must be investigated. 

So, for Nigeria just to discover that an oil pipeline was “illegally” installed for 9 years, what was happening to readings on pressure and reconciliations on crude oil assets? People, we really need to improve our systems if such a thing can happen considering the technologies I saw more than two decades ago in the oil industry. This is unacceptable.

Subsequently, Bashir Jamoh, director general of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency, said Thursday at a weekly ministerial meeting in Abuja that plans were underway to deploy round-the-clock surveillance to watch for oil theft. He said the operation would include manned and unmanned aircraft, helicopters, ships and armored vehicles, all connected to a headquarters known as the C4i Center.

Jamoh said selected officers from the agency were undergoing three weeks of training in Italy to enable them operate the aircraft. He said the drones “can move up to 100 kilometers and can remain 10 hours in one place, taking data and sending it to our own operations centers for possible intervention.”

Officials from the Nigerian National Petroleum Company on Tuesday announced the discovery of the pipeline being used to steal oil.

Jamoh said the pipeline was uncovered during a raid weeks ago. Authorities have not said who built it, and no arrests have been made.

Experts said the discovery of the underwater pipeline showed formerly unknown levels of sophistication among oil thieves.

Mele Kyari, managing director of the national petroleum company, said Nigeria was losing an alarming 600,000 barrels of oil every day, triple the figure initially estimated.

But Emmanuel Afimia, founder of an Abuja energy consulting firm, said it was not only oil theft that was contributing to Nigeria’s huge oil losses.