Gabriel Enenche —
While delivering a paper titled ‘Surveying Practice in Federal Capital Territory: The Burden of Land Tenure System and Lack of Adaptability to Change’, the Surveyor-General of the Association of Private Practicing Surveyors of Nigeria (APPSN), Mr. Taiwo Adeniran at a seminar organized by the association said the current land tenure system practiced in the country is incapable of unleashing private sector-led entrepreneurship and critical development needed in the country.
The Surveyor-General expressed that the Land Proclamation Ordinance enacted by one of the country’s colonial governors in 1900, disregarded the principle of native law and customs, and provided that title to land can only be acquired through the high commissioner.
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He said that the ordinance was enacted 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.
“This shows the colonial socialist inclinations with excessive state control of land ownership, use and development, he posited.
“The system cannot effectively support private sector-driven enterprises and development initiatives as it creates too much bureaucracy in the documentation of land transactions, land registration, and land titling.
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“Therefore, there is lockup capital in the land system, as it were, which does not support people empowerment. This is the major burden on the practice of surveying in the FCT as government is the major user of the practicing surveyors’ services.
“This is one of the reasons that necessitate the call for the repealing of the Land Use Act of 1978 and the introduction of Land Reform in 2007.”
He argued that without surveying and geospatial inputs, the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set out by the United Nations will not be achieved by 2030.
He, therefore, advised surveying professionals to come up with geospatial solutions that would facilitate the realisation of the goals and analyse the environment to prepare a proposal for government institutions that may want to deploy the innovations.
“Surveyors and geometricians must start thinking about solutions because surveying and geomantic 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.
