Group to test-run new land use law in Cross River

A Civil Society Organisation, Environmental Rights Action – Friends of the Earth Nigeria, (ERA-FoEN) has proposed and presented for evaluation, a draft model land use law for the country.

The draft model, which uses Cross River State as a pilot state, was presented to stakeholders and participants in a two-day workshop in Calabar.

Executive Director of ERA-FoEN, Dr. Godwin Ojo, explained that the choice of Cross River as the pilot state for the proposed Law was because the state is unique as it holds about 50 per cent of the last pristine forest in Nigeria.

“Not only that, there are evidence that the state is amendable to new ideas, such as mandatory cooperate Social Responsibility Acts, which is now in place.

“Again, there are so many communal conflicts and clashes. Individual clashes and inter–communities clashes.

It occurs very often and we know that land is scares in Cross River. Therefore the violent conflicts arising from the management of natural resources management and land issues, forest issues will likely continue”, he said.

Ojo stressed that the Land Use Act which vests ownership and control on state governor, may continue to be abused, if nothing is done.

He said that the draft model law is taking “a bottom up approach that provides rules and responsibilities for people at the lower levels, community members, individuals to have opportunity to be part and parcel of the decision making process on land governance issues.

“An outcome of a very robust research, we have academics, we have lawyers, we have researchers, we have community people, up to ten community people spread across villages and we have the gender component.”

He said, “We are very pleased with the level of acceptance from the public that it’s a very good draft bill/law.

In fact one of the assembly members present at the workshop said he is willing to sponsor the bill on the floor of the state legislature.

And our timeline is to be able to have the bill on the legislative floor by January 2019.”

Contributing, a resource person in the workshop, Mr. Nurudeen Ogbara explained that the draft Law is intended to cure the lacuna and the deficiencies that had been identified in the existing Land Use Act.”

He decried situations where many who require land for agricultural purposes cannot acquire land because they either lack the required connection or means.

“This situation touches on food security in the country as well. So the draft law is an alternative legal frame work seeking to cure the lacunas and the deficiencies in the existing Land Use Act.

We wish to do away with the need for governor’s consent and the need for certificate of occupancy by making land a matter of contract between the buyer and seller also between the existing owners of land and those who aspire to own land.

“We are looking at having the Land Use and Allocation Commission to take the place of the Land Use and Allocation committee”, he added.

Ogbara also revealed that the commission is proposed to be populated by at least 12 persons representing various interests in the state and should serve a tenure of five years single term.

He said : “we are also proposing a Land Tribunal which should handle every dispute arising from the land transactions and acquisitions and the High Court would then be a court of appellate jurisdiction to the tribunal.

The idea is to achieve quick dispensation of cases and the land tribunal will do away with unnecessary technicalities.”