Land Use Act: Forty-six years after

2
SIR: Land, which is viewed in legal parlance as the solid material of the earth and other ingredients of which it is composed, whether soil, rock and the reserved fossil fuels, are the foundational platform for human activities and national wealth. The demand and utilisation of land encompasses diverse sectors, such as agriculture, housing, forestry and infrastructure among others.

Prior to the promulgation of the Land Use Act in1978, there was no uniform land management system operational in Nigeria. In the Northern part of the country, land was communally owned, whereas in the Southern part, dual ownership exists in which individual families owned some parts of the land, while others were reserved for the community and administered by the traditional rulers.
  
The government at the centre was, however, not comfortable with the operation of such land tenure system, which hindered free access to land for government projects in every part of the country, hence the promulgation of Land Use Act, 1978 which has since unified land tenure system in the country.

The Act consists of 51 sections. Section 1 of it, vested all land in each state under the authority of the Executive Governor, to hold in trust and administer for the use and common benefits of all Nigerians. The Act also empowered the governor to designate the part of the land within the territory as an urban area and put the control and management of it in the governor, while the control of and management of rural areas are vested in the local government. This designation intends to make the management of this inelastic natural resource effective for the benefit of both the urban and rural dwellers.

However, the power of eminent domain conferred on the governor by section 28, has eroded the power of the local government to control and manage the rural land for the benefit of the teeming rural dwellers. In actual fact, not a fragment of the land in rural areas is under the control of the local government.

The provision of section 2(2a-c) and 2(5) that made it mandatory for the establishment of Land Use and Allocation Committee at the state and the local government levels, saddled with the advisory responsibility in matters relating to urban and rural land management and compensation dispute resolution, only exist on paper. The bodies are not in place in any of the local governments and in most of the states of the federation.

Though section 5 of the Act makes it lawful for the governor to grant Statutory Rights of Occupancy, in respect of land in urban area and Customary Rights of Occupancy in the rural areas, the process of the grant, seems to be cumbersome and unattractive to the public, while the power to compulsorily acquire land for overriding public interest, vested in the governor by section 28 and the provisions of section 29, which outlined the method of assessment for compensation for the unexhausted improvements on the acquired land, has impoverished the land owners and equally limited access to land that is required for economic development by investors.

The Act, which the public believe to have been conceived and passed by the social elite, to facilitate their own benefits, is plagued with the following under-listed major defects: The Act has concentrated much power in the hands of the governor.

The Act does not give outright ownership for the grantees of the Statutory Rights of Occupancy. The Act limits access to land for investment purposes. Investors are made to pass through a rigorous process, to obtain approval for further subsequent transactions. This stands to be the major flaws of the Act. The non-recognition of land values in the assessment of compensation figures makes the compensation payable to claimants inadequate.
 
Apart from the fact that the compensation is inadequate, the delay in the payment erodes the value of the money paid as compensation. The doubt being cast on whether the Act has actually met the purpose, for which it is enacted, necessitated the cry of the public for the repeal of the Act. Since the implementation of the Act, it has not met the yearning of the public. It is high time the process of the review is initiated by the National Assembly.
• Korede-Owa Oladunni Racheal is an estate surveyor and valuer.