The Impeding Progress of Land Tenure System

The Impeding Progress of Land Tenure System

Mr. Taiwo Adeniran, Surveyor-General of the Federation, spoke about the incapability of unleashing private sector-led entrepreneurship and critical development needed in Nigeria due to the current land tenure system practiced in Nigeria.

Adeniran made this known during the delivery of a paper titled: ‘Surveying Practice in Federal Capital Territory: The Burden of Land Tenure System and Lack of Adaptability to Change’, at a seminar organized by the Association of Private Practicing Surveyors of Nigeria (APPSN).

He also stressed that the Land Proclamation Ordinance validated by Lord Lugard in 1900 disregarded the principle of native law and customs, and provided that title to Land can only be owed through the high commissioner.

Adeniran concluded that the ordinance was approved to kill the institution of family and communal land ownership by facilitating the acquisition of title to land through the high commissioner.

While also criticizing the Land and Native Rights Act of 1916, Adeniran said the present land ownership system in Nigeria as enshrined in the Land Use Act of 1978 had its origin in the 1916 document enacted in the North by the colonial masters.

He said, “This shows the colonial socialist inclinations with excessive state control of land ownership, use and development”.

And cannot effectively aid private sector-driven enterprises and development initiatives, because of the creation of too many bureaucracies in the documentation of Land transactions, registration, and titling.

“The support for people empowerment is not encouraged due to the lockup capital in the land system”. Posing as a burden on the practice of surveying in the FCT as the government is the major user of the practicing surveyors’ services.

“And for this course, a call was made to revoke the Land Use Act of 1978 and the introduction of Land Reform in 2007.”

Adeniran said the United Nations won’t achieve its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030 without surveying and geospatial inputs.

And so advised surveying professionals to develop geospatial solutions in facilitating the realization of goals. In order to analyze the environment and prepare a proposal for government institutions that may want to deploy the innovations.

He urged “Surveyors and geometricians to think about solutions because surveying and geomatics are about solutions. Our major problem is that we wait for people to create jobs for us, whereas we have to create it and provide solutions for it,” he said.

The lack of understanding of issues by political leaders was pointed out by Layi Arinola, Chief Consultant, Arinmap Consultants, and advised stakeholders to come together to save the surveying profession in Nigeria, which, according to him, is slowly diminishing.

On his own, the FCT Chairman of APPSN, Solomon Olukotun, in his welcome address, disclosed that surveying practice in the FCT does not lack the requisite efforts from major stakeholders, but inadequate funding from the authorities.