The federal government is reviewing the Land Use Act of 1978 to take out the sections inhibiting economic development in it, Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Mr Boss Mustapha, has said.
Mustapha disclosed this during the opening ceremony of the 51st annual conference of the Nigerian Institution of Estate Surveyors and Valuers (NIESV) in Abuja on Thursday.
He said:
“The federal government is aware of the challenges posed by the Land Use Act of 1978 to your sector, the building and construction sector.
“And this is why we have embarked on the review of those areas constituting obstacles to economic development’’, the SGF said.
The SGF said the review would be done faster in order to foster economic development, especially now that the government is championing diversification.
Objectives of the Land Use Act of 1978
The Land Use Act aims principally at the effective and sustainable management and control of land in Nigeria particularly in a manner that gives government sufficient powers over the acquisition, transfer or otherwise assignment of land and land resources.
One of the objectives that the Act seeks to achieve is, investing ownership of land in government in order to remove the difficulty which government hitherto encountered in acquiring land for public purposes. Also, it aims to satisfy the need for larger areas of land for agriculture and non-agricultural purposes; end racketeering and the unending litigations in land transactions due to rising demand for land; checkmate traditional land ownership that had constituted barrier to national development programmes.
Before the enactment of the Land Use Act, outside the lands acquired by government, most of the lands in the country, the South especially, were the subject of private ownership and were as such subjects of commerce. For that matter, individuals, families or communities had absolute liberty and discretion to sell, mortgage, lease or retain their land without reference to a superior authority.
Land was then owned absolutely by private individuals, families or communities and was not subject to government control save where the occupier held a funny title as a customary tenant.
However, in terms of attaining its set objectives, it is argued in the government circles that the Land Use Act has not been a success. Two principal reasons account for this.
The first is the Act’s inherent contradictions and defects, the second is institutional weakness, and lack of political will in the country to secure a just, fair and effective implementation of the Act to bring about economic development.
In light of the above, it had been observed that there had been a series of violent clashes and conflicts between the farmers and Fulani herdsmen. The reason for the conflict is as a result of accusation and counter-accusation that there had been land encroachment and destruction of agricultural crops by herdsmen cattle. The Fulani herdsmen also complain of cattle theft by people residing in the host communities.
43 years after the then Head of State, Olusegun Obasanjo’s military government enacted the law, no part of the law has ever been reviewed. Calls for the removal of the Act from the constitution have also all fallen on deaf ears. Yet, this law affects the generality of Nigerians more than the order of election, which had become a matter of do or die for some of our lawmakers whose duty is to effect any changes in that regard.
Despite returning to democracy for an uninterrupted 22 years, a law made 43 years ago which vested all lands in the state in the ‘military governor’ of the state is yet to be amended, yet no Nigerian has gone to court to challenge any of the civilian governors for operating under a law meant for a military governor only.
However, in order to curb the clashes between the farmers and Fulani herdsmen, the Federal Government of Nigeria is seeking to introduce Rural Grazing Area (RUGA Settlement) and National Livestock Transformation Plan (NLTP), which was widely criticized and condemned. It was, therefore, concluded that there is a need to ensure that the farmers and herdsmen live in peace, unity, and harmony in making use of the available resources for agricultural purposes by recommending that the Land Use Act and the Grazing Reserved Act that provide adequately for grazing reserved for livestock be duly and completely implemented.
This, obviously, is the reason the government is calling on estate surveyors and valuers to work with the government in the reviewing process.
