APPRAISAL OF THE IMPACT OF LAND ADMINISTRATION IN NIGERIA UNDER THE LAND USE ACT 1978

Abstract

Land remains the most vital economic asset available to any society, and the manner of its administration has far-reaching consequences for national development, tenure security and access to credit. Prior to 1978, land tenure in Nigeria was governed by a fragmented mix of customary law in the South and the paternalistic Land Tenure Law in the North, a state of affairs that bred multiple litigations, land speculation and inequitable access to land. The Land Use Act 1978 was enacted to harmonize these disparate tenurial systems by vesting all land comprised in the territory of each state in the Governor, to be held in trust and administered for the use and common benefit of all Nigerians, and by substituting a uniform regime of statutory and customary rights of occupancy for the pre-existing freehold and customary estates. Nearly five decades after its promulgation, the tripartite administrative structure erected by the Act comprising the National Council of States, the State Governor and the Local Government has proved inconsistent, heavily centralized in the Governor, and, in several material respects, counter-productive to the very objectives it set out to achieve. This paper undertakes a doctrinal appraisal of the impact of land administration in Nigeria under the Land Use Act 1978. It examines the conceptual and historical framework of land tenure, analyses the institutional structure created by the Act, and evaluates, by reference to statutory provisions and judicial authorities, the extent to which land administration under the Act has advanced or hindered tenure security, access to credit, local governance and equitable development. The paper finds that while the Act achieved a measure of statutory uniformity and facilitated government access to land for public purposes, its administration has been marred by an overbearing concentration of executive, legislative and quasi-judicial power in the Governor, ambiguous urban and non-urban classification, cumbersome consent requirements under section 22, a moribund National Council of States, and an emasculated Local Government tier. The paper concludes that the current administrative architecture requires urgent legislative intervention, and recommends, among other things, the removal or simplification of the Governor's consent requirement, review of the compensation regime, adoption of uniform criteria for urban designation, and the relocation of land matters from the residual to the concurrent legislative list.