Nigerian Startup Uses Blockchain to End Land Fraud

Ndifreke Ikpoku thought he was investing in his future when he paid $13,000 for land outside Port Harcourt in 2017. Instead, he discovered the plot had been sold to multiple buyers, and his money was gone.

Rather than accept defeat, Ikpoku turned his loss into a mission. He and co-founder Nnamdi Uba created Sytemap, a startup that uses blockchain technology to digitize land records and stop fraud before it happens.

In Nigeria's property market, fraud isn't a rare occurrence. It's a structural problem built into the system.

Developers routinely sell more plots than exist. Agents market land that's already changed hands multiple times. Verifying ownership requires navigating incomplete government records and opaque bureaucracy.

The problem hits hardest in Lagos, where rapid urban growth means land can change hands several times before anyone completes formal registration. Double allocation, where multiple buyers receive rights to the same parcel, happens so frequently that the federal government launched a fraud-tracking portal in August 2025.

Ikpoku and Uba initially tried working with government agencies to build a blockchain-based land registry. They partnered with mortgage institutions and signed agreements with surveyor organizations, even exploring a pilot program in Kaduna State.

Then the pandemic hit. "We stayed the whole lot of 2020 without achieving one single thing," Uba said.

By 2021, the founders realized waiting for government integration would kill their company. They found a faster solution: working directly with private real estate developers.

Developers already maintain their own mini-registries when they subdivide large land parcels into individual plots. Sytemap digitizes these private records and connects them into a single mapped system backed by satellite imagery.

The Ripple Effect

Sytemap's map directory shows buyers exactly what they're purchasing using satellite-backed coordinates. Each estate is mapped, every plot geo-referenced, and all allocations recorded against specific locations visible on screen.

"You are not going to buy audio land," Ikpoku said. "What you are buying is what you are seeing on the map."

The company verifies that developers actually own the properties they're selling and confirms the land exists before adding it to their platform. Using Google Maps as a foundation, they layer additional mapping features to create detailed property records.

The shift from government partnership to private-sector solution means Sytemap can scale faster. Instead of waiting for bureaucratic approval, they're building trust one verified estate at a time.

For Nigerian homebuyers who've watched friends and family lose life savings to fraudulent land deals, Sytemap offers something previously unavailable: certainty. The blockchain creates permanent, tamper-proof records that multiple buyers can't be issued rights to the same plot.

What started as one man's financial loss is becoming infrastructure that protects thousands of families from experiencing the same heartbreak.