4.1 The Land Use Act 1978: Vesting and Land Administration

4.1 The Land Use Act 1978: Vesting and Land Administration

Statutory reference: Land Use Act, originally the Land Use Decree No. 6 of 1978, commencement 29 March 1978, now Cap L5 Laws of the Federation of Nigeria 2004. It is entrenched by section 315(5) of the 1999 Constitution, which means it cannot be altered by ordinary legislation but only by the procedure for amending the Constitution.

For a surveyor the Act is not background reading. Every cadastral survey defines the extent of a right of occupancy; every certificate of occupancy and every consent application depends on a plan; and section 5(2) means that a plan defining the wrong land extinguishes the wrong rights.

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1. What the Act replaced

Before 29 March 1978 Nigeria operated two broadly distinct tenure systems.

• Northern Nigeria operated under the Land Tenure Law 1962, itself descended from the Land and Native Rights Ordinance. All land was declared native land under the control and administration of the Minister or Governor, held in trust for the people. The 1978 Act's vesting formula is recognisably descended from this model.
• Southern Nigeria was dominated by customary tenure - land held by families, communities and stools and administered by family or community heads - alongside English freehold and leasehold titles concentrated in urban centres such as Lagos, together with State land derived from colonial Crown land.

The problems the drafters identified were real and are worth being able to state precisely: speculation in undeveloped land; the cost and delay of government acquisition for infrastructure; endemic litigation over communal ownership and boundaries; and the difficulty of securing clear title, which in turn obstructed the use of land as security for credit.

The Act's stated objects were correspondingly: equal access to land for every Nigerian; the curbing of speculation; easier public acquisition for development; and the harmonisation of a fragmented tenure system into one statutory regime.

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2. Vesting: section 1

Subject to the provisions of this Act, all land comprised in the territory of each State in the Federation are hereby vested in the Governor of that State, and such land shall be held in trust and administered for the use and common benefit of all Nigerians in accordance with the provisions of this Act.

What section 1 does:

• It transfers the radical title - the ultimate proprietary interest - in all land within a State to the Governor of that State.
• It converts private proprietary interests into rights of occupancy, held under and subject to the Act.
• It imposes a trust: the Governor holds not beneficially but for the use and common benefit of all Nigerians. That is the constitutional basis on which the exercise of the Governor's powers can be challenged as an abuse of trust.

What section 1 does not do:

• It does not extinguish existing occupation. Parts V and VI convert existing holdings into deemed rights (sections 34 and 36), and section 5(2) extinguishes prior rights only where a fresh statutory grant is made over the same land.
• It does not reach federal land. Section 49 preserves title to land vested in the Federal Government or any of its agencies, which continues to be held by the Federal Government. Federal establishments, military land and federal agency estates therefore sit outside the section 1 vesting.
• It does not vest minerals. Mineral resources are vested in the Federal Government under the Nigerian Minerals and Mining Act 2007, and mineral title is administered separately.

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3. Administration: urban and non-urban (section 2)

Section 2 allocates administration, not ownership.

Two careful distinctions.

First, the statutory names. The committee advising the Governor is the Land Use and Allocation Committee - not the "Land Use Allocation Committee". The committee advising the Local Government is the Land Allocation Advisory Committee. Getting the two names right, and the right way round, is a standing Paper VI marker.

Second, the Governor's power is not confined to urban land. Section 2 confines the Local Government's administration to land not in an urban area, but section 5(1)(a) empowers the Governor to grant statutory rights of occupancy whether or not the land is in an urban area. The urban / non-urban line therefore constrains the Local Government, not the Governor.

The Land Use and Allocation Committee

Section 2(2)(a) requires the Governor to set up in each State a Land Use and Allocation Committee, with responsibility for:

• advising the Governor on the management of land in urban areas;
• advising on resettlement of persons affected by revocation of rights of occupancy on the ground of overriding public interest; and
• determining disputes as to the amount of compensation payable under the Act for improvements on land.

That last function connects directly to section 30, under which a dispute as to the amount of compensation calculated under section 29 is referred to the appropriate Land Use and Allocation Committee.

The Land Allocation Advisory Committee

Section 2(2)(b) requires each Local Government to set up a Land Allocation Advisory Committee to advise it on the management of land not in an urban area.

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4. Why the vesting matters to a surveyor

The consequences run through the whole of Nigerian practice:

1. There is no freehold to survey. What you define is the extent of a right of occupancy. Descriptions such as "the family's land" have no statutory content; the parcel is what the plan says it is.
2. Every grant needs a plan. A certificate of occupancy under section 9 identifies land, and identification is a survey function.
3. Every consent needs a plan. Sections 21 and 22 require consent for alienation, and a consent application must identify the parcel being dealt with (section 4.3).
4. Overlaps are systemic, not exceptional. Because section 5(2) extinguishes existing rights on a fresh statutory grant, a State that grants without checking against existing surveys creates a real conflict, not a paper one. That is why regulation 4 of the Survey Regulations requires connection to Government framework beacons - an unconnected survey cannot be checked for overlap.
5. Public acquisition depends on survey. Sections 28 to 30 govern revocation and compensation; a corridor or block cannot be revoked, gazetted or compensated without being defined on the ground (section 4.4).

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5. The standing criticism

Paper VII candidates should know the debate, because it is one of the few essay themes with settled literature.

In favour of the Act: it created one national tenure regime; it made public acquisition feasible; it removed the worst forms of speculation in undeveloped land; and it gave every Nigerian a route to a legally recognised interest.

Against: the consent requirements in sections 21 and 22, given their reach after Savannah Bank v Ajilo, impose delay and cost on every dealing and have become a source of title insecurity rather than of security; the compensation regime pays for improvements rather than for land value, which affected communities regard as inadequate; entrenchment under section 315(5) makes reform procedurally difficult; and a very large proportion of Nigerian land remains outside the formal registry despite the Act's harmonising object.

A strong essay engages with the trade-off - State control of dealings against transaction cost and title certainty - rather than simply endorsing or condemning the statute.