The term contract is widely defined to mean a promise or set of promises which the law will enforce. It is an agreement enforceable by the law between two or more persons to do or abstain from doing some act or acts, their intention being to create legal relations and not merely to exchange mutual promises. Hence, the central purpose of contract is primarily to impose a duty on the individual parties to carry out their respective obligations under it, failing which a party who defaults or refuses to discharge his obligations under the contract will be liable for a breach of contract. However, beyond the simple agreement entered between persons for commercial transactions, a contract exist in property transactions. That is, there are elements of contract in a Sale of Land Agreement, Lease/Tenancy Agreement, and even a Mortgage/Pledge Agreement. Commercial contracts/transaction shares the same elements with property transactions. Nonetheless, the ability to make and enforce contracts and resolve disputes is fundamental.
Good enforcement procedures enhance predictability in commercial relationships and reduce uncertainty by ensuring that the rights of contractual parties will be upheld promptly by local courts. Thus, when procedures for enforcing contracts are bureaucratic and cumbersome or when contractual disputes cannot be resolved timely and, in a cost, effective manner, it to a large extent make persons tepid from entering into any contractual relationships.
Accordingly, the aim of this work is to examine the enforcement of contracts vis-à-vis the effective resolution of disputes between contractual parties with particular reference to property transactions in Nigeria. It seeks to achieve this by examining the concept of contracts in property transactions, the laws governing property transactions in Nigeria, the systems in place for the judicial enforcement of contract in a timely and effective manner, taking into consideration, the provisions of the contract, the parties to the contract, the time between the filing of a lawsuit and resolution in judicial enforcements and the cost of judicial enforcements as a percentage of claim value. It shall also consider judicial foreclosure and the power of sale as a method of enforcing a mortgage agreement between a mortgagor and a mortgagee.