Aliens' Acquisition of Land in Nigeria: An Incursion into the Evolving Jurisprudence
| DOI | 10.3366/ajicl.2021.0355 |
| Pages | 154-167 |
| Date | 01 February 2021 |
| Published date | 01 February 2021 |
Land from time immemorial has always had embedded within it, besides its inestimable economic value, a good level of prestige enjoyed by the occupants and others who are able to lay claims to it. History is replete with records of nations engaged in internecine and international wars to protect their land boundaries because of the political, social, economic and security implications associated with land. But land ownership, as it is known in contemporary times, is a strange phenomenon in the pre-colonial African society. The mutual coexistence and respect in those communities were considered far more important than the assertion of an individual's interest over land to the exclusion of others.
The right of use is an inalienable right as the process of inheritance inures from one generation to the other. The advent of colonial rule in Africa heralded the redefining of the indigenous people's relationships to land. Communality was supplanted by exclusive ownership with the resultant assertion of title and not just interest on land. Persons without land titles were thus excluded from the enjoyment of land except on terms prescribed by the title holders. This practice became engraved in the various instruments regulating the acquisition of land in different African nations with distinctions drawn in some cases between natives and aliens in laying down conditions for land acquisition and usage.
Nigeria, as one of those countries that passed through colonial administration, had a number of land regulatory instruments operating in different regions of the country. The need for a unified land practice in the country and to guarantee stronger government control over land led to the promulgation of the Land Use Act of 1978 (LUA).
The various regions which were amalgamated into the country called Nigeria had before the promulgation of the LUA in 1978 transited from the customary communal land holdings to individual ownership and interest in land. This was made possible by the influence of the colonial administration in those regions. The various proclamations
Some safeguards were provided for those aliens who already held titles to land before the enactment but with added restrictions in a new section 3A which provides that: ‘Where any interest or right in or over any land has been acquired by an alien from a native with the approval in writing of the governor as provided for in Section 3, such interest or right shall not: (a) be transferred to any other alien without the approval in writing of the Governor.’ Section 4 of the Act provides that it shall be unlawful for any alien or for any person claiming to be an alien to occupy any land belonging to a ‘native’ unless the right of the alien to occupy or authorise the occupation of the land is evidenced by an instrument which has received the approval of the governor (or his delegate) in writing. These provisions were originally primarily aimed at the protection of the interests of British multinationals, such as the Royal Niger Company, that had carved out a territory for themselves in Southern Nigeria, and to restrict competition for territorial gains by other nations' multinational companies and colonial powers. The continued implementation of the successors to that statute in the respective regions of Nigeria after Nigerian independence had transformed them into instruments of ethnicity as they protected the rights of the indigenous people to land while restricting the rights of access by non-natives.
In the Northern region, the Land Tenure Law of 1962 was enacted shortly after Nigerian independence, to replace the Land and Native Rights Act of 1916. That piece of legislation vested all the lands in the northern region in the Minister in charge of land to be administered for the use and benefits of the ‘natives’ of the Northern region. The ‘natives’ were defined in the Act as persons whose fathers were members of any tribes indigenous to the northern region. In order words, all persons who did not have Northern Nigerian origin were regarded as non-natives. Thus the law applied to other Nigerians and non-Nigerians alike. While the natives were granted rights of occupancy which entitled the holder to use and occupy land, alienation to non-natives could only be made with the prior consent of the Minister.
Inferences from the above analysis are that the land legislation that was in place in Nigeria before the promulgation of the LUA in 1978 did not prohibit aliens from acquiring land in Nigeria. There were, however, restrictions entrenched in those laws which were in operation in the different regions of Nigeria. The restrictions were implemented by the administrators of the respective regions to ensure control over land acquisition and, to some extent, the preservation of the regional autonomy. There was nothing inherently wrong in these pieces of legislation except the philosophy behind their origin during the colonial regime where consideration of the interest of the indigenous people was rather secondary. The divergences in the applications of those laws in a sovereign nation was against the unification stance of the military government that presided over the affairs of the nation at the time. It was against that backdrop that the Land Use Act was enacted in 1978 primarily to unify the land tenure system all over the country.
The unification purpose of the LUA was succinctly captured in section 1 of the Act which provides as follows:
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