Abstract
This study appraises the Nigerian Land Use Act and its capacity to engender economic development and prosperity. The Land Use Act was enacted in 1978 with the aim of energizing economic development by ensuring effective and equitable utilization of land and land resources in the country. As this study has found out, however, achieving this lofty objective has been hampered by two major obstacles. The first is the inherent contradictions and defects in the law, and the second is institutional weakness and lack of political will to implement the Act fairly and equitably. The study has further discovered that the result of these anomalies is a failure of the Act to accomplish some of its major objectives. To re-focus the Act and secure economic development and easy access to land by both government and the citizens, the paper has recommended the amendment of certain provisions of the Act in addition to mustering the political will by government to implement the amended version of the Act in a fair and equitable way.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the study
The land use Decree No. 6 of 1978 otherwise popularly called Land Use Act was promulgated on 29th March, 1978, the effective date of the commencement of its operation in Nigeria. It is a statutory approach or device used by the federal government to consolidate and harmonize the diverse tenures prevalent in the country before the promulgation. It aims at ensuring the protection of the rights of all Nigerians to enable them to provide for the sustenance of themselves and their families.
It abolished the age long tradition of private ownership of land in the south and introduced a uniform system of land tenure throughout the country.
Land tenure under this dispensation means that; one cannot have an interest in land beyond the terms granted to him by the statute (usually 99 years) and such interest is renewable on expiration.
The act vests all land comprised in the territory of each state (except land vested in the Federal Government for its agencies) solely in the hands of the military governors of the state who would hold such land in true for the people.
Finally, the promulgation of this Act was as a result of two main factors;
Firstly, was the diversity of customary laws on land tenure and difficulty in applying the various customs of the different peoples.
The second factor was the rampant practice in southern Nigeria with regards to fraudulent sales of land. The same land would be sold to different persons at the same time giving rise to so many litigations.
Land being the most universal, most valuable, probably the most controversial assets, the one and the only foundation of all human activities, requires a planned system of holding, control and regulations so as to avoid misuse and abuse of rights thereof.
In the words of Taslim O. Elias, (a renowned Jurist). “The indigenous system does not admit that land can ever be without an owner” indeed, if land (Real property), were to be a “res nullius” (something belonging to none), it will be valueless in the economic sense, there will be no question of compulsory acquisition, purchase, revocation and subsequent compensation. It may not be out of place to suggest that without valid control and regulation, ownership of land may depend purely on the physical strength of an individual or how violent the person can be. Such situation will definitely be anchoretic.
This work therefore unraveled the effects of Land Use Act, 1978 to prospective investors on real property (land), estate surveyors, private individuals etc, particularly in Enugu urban.
Since its promulgation however, the land use Act has been under intense fire as virtually almost every part of it has been criticized. The Act hardly went down well with traditional Nigeria, mainly because of the factors of interest in communal land ownership comprising several dead ancestors, relatively few living members and countless unborn generations. Many of their forefathers and mothers lost their lives in the process of acquiring the lands and were buried there. Unless their bodies and bones are exhumed, it remains a taboo to leave those lands. One therefore observes the existence of several motives and circumstances attracted to land ownership. In traditional Nigeria, many of which are non – economic and therefore cannot assuaged monetarily since the owners do not sale, alienate or part with land as freely or easily as other commodities.
Professionally speaking, land and its attributes, features and components embodies value in encounter.
