Forty years after the promulgation of the Land Use Decree – Decree 6 of 1978 by the retired General Olusegun Obasanjo’s military regime, a stakeholder in building construction has urged the National Assembly to, as a matter of urgency, expunge the law from the Constitution. The decree, which was promulgated on March 29, 1978, was to become part of the Constitution barely a year later, when the military handed over to the civilian government of Alhaji Shehu Shagari. It then became an Act.
A Principal Partner in a firm of estate surveyors and valuers, Kola Akomolede and Co, Chief Kola Akomolede, in a position paper on the need for the law to be expunged, contended that a law made 40 years ago, vesting all land in a state in the “Military Governor” needed to be amended to read “Governor” since the country is no longer under military rule.
“The law vested all land in any state in the Military Governor of the state without giving the Federal Government power to acquire land in the states. Before the law, the power of “eminent domain” existed for the Federal Government to invoke if it needed to acquire land in any part of the Federation for overriding public purposes.
“Under the Land Use Act, the Federal Government must go and beg the states for land in order to do anything in the state no matter how important it is to national affair. I think the Federal Government should have an unfettered access to land in any part of the Federation for public uses,” he said.
Akomolede lamented that the law, as it were, allows a person to own a maximum of half a hectare of undeveloped land at any particular time. This, he explained, is not good for estate developers, who need several hectares to develop houses for public habitation. To him, all allocations to developers or industrialist, which exceed half a hectare, is a violation of the law.
Taking a cursory look at the law and areas of grave concern, the estate surveyor and valuer noted that the Land Use Act made provisions for the establishment of land use and allocation committees, whose purpose is to advise governors on the management and allocation of land in their states.
According to him, such a committees do not seem to exist any longer. This development, he explained, has given room to the “Governor” to be the sole allocator of land, thereby creating a monopoly of the authority to allocate land.
“The law should, therefore, be amended to make it compulsory for state governors to always have a Land Use and Allocation Committee in place for land allocation to be valid. This will curb the abuses we have witnessed all over the country in the way state land is being distributed to governors’ family members and their cronies only,” he argued.
Furthermore, Akomolede said there is a need to revisit the clause on “Governors’ consent” to all subsequent transactions because it has become a clog in the wheel of progress in the process of transfer of interest in land in some states. Besides, he said, some states have turned this clause into a money making exercise by demanding a very high percentage of the value of the land as consent fees. For instance, Akomolede explained that the consent fees, which used to be 15 per cent of land value in Lagos State, but reduced to three per cent recently after much pressure, is still too high. He revealed that besides the monetary payment, the process of obtaining the consent can be very tortuous and time consuming, hence, the clause should be expunged or a procedure which will be less cumbersome and expensive to be put in place.
The aspect that deals with compensation for land whose Certificate of Occupancy (C of O) has been revoked, he argued, is the most unfair and oppressive of the entire law (Section 29-33). For example, he explained, it limits compensation to only improvements on the land and ground rent paid in the year of acquisition.
“This means that if you buy a piece of land today for N100 million and while you are perfecting your title and the land is acquired for public purposes, you will be entitled to compensation for only the ground rent paid in the year of acquisition. You will not be compensated for the purchase price, which you paid at all. This section further goes to say that if you are provided an alternative to your acquired property and the value of the alternative is higher than the value of your property, you shall be made to pay the difference. But if it is lower, you will not be entitled to the difference.
“The principle of compensation is to put you in the same position as you were before your property was acquired. Above cannot do that. There is, therefore, the need to revisit this section and make it more equitable and fair to all concerned,” he said.
Some part of the Land Use Act, especially the area of compensation, is in conflict with the constitution. The 1979 Constitution has provided that “no person’s property shall be acquired without adequate compensation”, whereas Sections 29 – 33 of the Land Use Act do not make provision for adequate compensation, thereby creating a conflict. Since the Land Use Act has been made part of the same constitution, this conflict must be removed.
Akomolede further contended: “There has also been a little controversy over the real status of a Certificate of Occupancy (C of O). Is it a title to land or a mere evidence of occupation of the land as the name suggests? Sometimes ago, a minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) woke up one day and cancelled or revoked all C of Os on all land in the FCT because some were defective or obtained fraudulently. All allottees were then directed to recertify their documents and get another C of O. If the C of Os were title like the previous land certificate or deed of conveyance, it would not have been possible to cancel them by such a mere directive.”
He lamented that since the promulgation of the decree, banks and other financial institutions have not been accepting bare land, irrespective of the size and value, as collateral for loans and advances, despite the high price paid to purchase same. This, he explained, is as a result of the compensation clause, which has nothing for the owner of land if its C of O is revoked.
This, he said, has been a source of serious problem for those who have land and will like to use it as collateral for loans either to develop the land or for other businesses, adding that the value of land can be greater than the value of the development on it in most high end locations.
To him, it is not right to ignore the value of the land and pay compensations only on the land, noting: “This is one more way that the Land Use Act is unfavourable towards the housing development in the country.”
He continued:“The Land Use Decree has been operating for 40 years and we have all seen the areas that need amendment in order to reduce the inconveniences and illegalities contained therein. The National Assembly must, therefore, take a serious look at the law and either set in motion the machinery to carry out a review or remove the law from the constitution to make it amenable to review as and when the need arises,” Akomolede concluded.
