97% of Nigeria’s land has no registered owners -FG

The Federal Government has set machinery in motion to grant all legitimate land owners in Nigeria the privilege of obtaining certificate of occupancy. It was also gathered that 97 per cent of landed properties in Nigeria have no registered owners. The government said, going by its current efforts on land reform, it would be possible that all landed properties in Nigeria would be titled within the next 10 years.

It said it was no longer comfortable with the record which shoed that only three per cent of the land in Nigeria was titled and registered, such that the country currently ranks 182 out of 185 countries among the countries of the world captured as having difficulties on land registration.

The Presidential Committee on Land Reform and Land Administration disclosed this through a statement made available to Saturday Tribune, adding that the government was set to deploy a high measure of technology in defining land possessory rights in the country.

It said the process of land reform in the country had taken off with a pilot scheme in Ondo and Kano states, adding that the success of the scheme on land distribution and registration would determine the pace of implementation of the overall.

The anchor of the land reform, Professor Peter Adeniyi, had earlier disclosed that the presidential committee had recruited a total of 25,000 personnel to anchor the ongoing pilot scheme in Ondo and Kano and the sensitisation programme which he said the scheme required.

He said the pilot schemes in the two states would be rounded up within the next six months while it would provide the template for administering the land reform being processed.

The presidential committee, he stressed, would collaborate with the state and local governments to ensure proper registration of land in the country such that at the end of the exercise, every land owner would be captured in land register in the country.

Stressing the advantage of land registration and titling, Professor Adeniyi said a proper land registration would always serve as a platform for economic development and a veritable source of data on population distribution in the country, among others.

According to him, the ongoing Land Reform process at the instance of the Presidency would require an alteration of the existing law on land such that the idea of mortgage would be introduced into the land acquisition mechanism in Nigeria.

The Reform he disclosed further would the setting up a special department for land adjudicators whose main function would be to assist individual land owners seek protection on his or her property with the involvement of the government.

He, however disclosed that the Report on Land Reform would be reay with proper recommendations on land management in the country.

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