Ayodeji Ajuwon: Engineering Trust Through Data - Inside LandCharting’s Fight With Real Estate Fraud
For years, Nigeria’s real estate market has battled one persistent enemy: fraud. Duplicate land titles, unverifiable surveys, and forged documents have cost investors billions and eroded trust in legitimate developers.
But in 2023, a quiet technological revolution began, led by Ayodeji Ajuwon, the data architect behind Land Republic’s new verification platform known as LandCharting.
LandCharting isn’t just another property database. It’s a data-engineering and intelligent verification system built to authenticate, cross-reference, and monitor land ownership records in real time.
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Designed under Ajuwon’s leadership, the system integrates data pipelines from surveyor-general registries, notarial offices, and geospatial datasets, consolidating them into a single, governed layer of truth.
Ajuwon says:
“The biggest problem in real estate fraud isn’t lack of documents, it’s lack of connected data.
“We built LandCharting to bridge that gap, so that every parcel, every title, every transaction has a digital fingerprint.”
At its core, LandCharting is a multi-layered data infrastructure. Extracting and cleaning records from multiple agencies and private registries, and satellite and cadastral data to verify land coordinates and detect overlaps.
AI Models are used in flagging anomalies such as duplicated title numbers or suspicious metadata, based on training from historical fraud cases. Every verification event is logged and time-stamped to prevent retroactive tampering.
These systems work together to produce a confidence score for each property, allowing developers, investors, and government agencies to instantly see whether a plot passes integrity checks.
Ajuwon adds:
“The technology is only part of it. “What matters is the accountability loop. Once data becomes transparent, behavior changes.”
The idea was born inside Land Republic’s data innovation lab, where Ajuwon serves as both Chief Technology Officer and architect of the company’s data systems.
Drawing on his background in data analytics and machine-learning pipelines, he led a cross-functional team of engineers and legal-tech analysts to transform Nigeria’s fragmented land registry model into a connected ecosystem.
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Land Republic began onboarding state-level agencies and private surveyors into the system, marking one of the first large-scale attempts to align regulatory data, cadastral intelligence, and commercial property records in a unified verification layer.
LandCharting’s impact goes beyond fraud prevention. It introduces a trust-by-design framework for property transactions; every verification request leaves a digital trail accessible to authorised stakeholders, from notaries to financial institutions.
Early pilot results showed a 60% reduction in duplicate title disputes and a 40% improvement in transaction turnaround time.
Ajuwon notes:
“Real estate data has always existed, just in silos. “The power lies in integrating it, structuring it, and making it verifiable.”
For Ajuwon, the work is less about land and more about data ethics and infrastructure for governance.
He said:
“Whether it’s property or finance, the goal is the same: traceability, transparency, and trust."
With LandCharting, he has turned that philosophy into a platform, one that doesn’t just manage data but restores confidence in an industry that desperately needs it.
And as Land Republic scales the system across regions, one thing is clear: in Ajuwon’s world, data isn’t paperwork, it’s proof.
Source: Legit.ng
