GAZETTE: UNDERSTANDING LAND DOCUMENTS (PART 1)

There are some fundamental information that we must have before we go into land deals. Prior to the time the Land Use Act was enacted in 1978, Traditional Families who had so much land power under their control benefitted from taking pleasure over all the rights given to the land owners. Because of this mega-power they wielded with land, they gave out lands to individuals under a tenancy system for them to use the land either for fishing or farming while they still maintained control over the portion of the land given to the individual. It wasn’t until the creation of Lagos Executive Development Board by mid 20th century that individuals were now able to acquire land from the Board directly in exchange for a sum of money instead of going to meet the traditional families to obtain land.

This led to Traditional Families splitting their lands to keep some for the family use and others for sale to individuals directly to compete with the Lagos Executive Development. This system still made the Traditional Families total top dogs in exercising exclusive rights with lands they chose to sell and the ones they chose to keep. This eventually led to the birth of land speculation in Nigeria because lands were very expensive to purchase and difficult to obtain. Because of this and other ancillary reasons, it finally led to the promulgation of the Land Use Decree on the 28th of March, 1978 that vested all lands in every state of the Federation under the control of the State Governors.

People could now directly obtain lands from the Governor and the Governor could allocate land to the individual or Companies inquiring about land and issue Certificate of Occupancy to these people it has allocated land to.
The Land Use Act, coupled with other laws, made it possible for the Governor who was now the owner of all lands in the state to actually have the power to acquire more lands compulsorily for its own public purpose to provide Amenities for the greater good of the citizens.

The Acquisition of land from the Family by the Governor who is now the custodian of all lands in the state was now empowered by the Land Use Act to take the general control and management of all URBAN land and any area designated as an Urban area by the Governor shall be published in an Official Government Record book known as the Gazette. Any area, community or village the Governor designates as an Urban Area is an Acquired land (and said to be either Government Acquisition or Committed Land) and the rest of the land it has not acquired may be given back to the community it was acquired from in the form of an Excision. An Excision means basically taking a part from a whole and that part that has been excised will be recorded and documented in the official government gazette of that state.

So for example, if in 1981, Victoria Island (VI), Ikoyi and Lekki were all part of one big Community joined together called Oniru and it had no separation to know which area is called Ikoyi, Lekki or VI then and it has an approximate total area estimate of 100,000 square meters and the Government is interested in that area and decides to take 70,000 square meters for itself for use as an urban area or public purpose, it will record this acquisition in the official government gazette and also record that the remaining 30,000 square meters has been left alone for the traditional family to have and do with it whatever it pleases.

Watch out for Part 2 next week.

Source: online

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