Governors Are Land Grabbers – OAU’s Professor

A Professor of Estate Management, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Dr Bioye Tajudeen Aluko has accused Nigerian governors of grabbing lands in their respective states.

The Professor stated this yesterday in Abeokuta, Ogun State, during the 2021 Mandatory Continuing Professional Development Seminar (MCPD) of the Nigerian Institute of Estate Surveyors and Valuers (NIESV), with the theme, “Effective Land Administration System Toward Elegant Formal Land Market In Nigeria”.

Aluko, who was the guest speaker at the seminar, said: “Section one of the Land Use Act did not remove the personal land owners as owners of their lands. But the land grabbers are hiding under that cover: because the state is not the owner.

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“The original land owners are the owners of their lands. Hiding under that cover, that is why you see governors enriching their friends, as a form of political patronage. If you don’t belong to their parties, you can’t get allocation. It is land grabbing. Call it any other name, it is land grabbing.

“Most states will acquire land, they said it is a public land. Before you know it, they will divide those lands among themselves. If you look at all the governors in this country, they put land under their ministry. If a governor is serious, and he is truly interested in the development of their state, will he have time for administering land? He would have left the professionals to do it themselves.

“They all put land under their ministry. So where there is a new site, they will first of all look at the site, grab some good choicy plots for his would-be political friends and ask the land allocators to allocate the rest. So, the land grabbers are the governors themselves.

“We need to look at the Land Use Act again and remove it from the constitution so that we can re-enact a good land law. There is no way we can do it, we must allow the original land owners to own their lands.

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“If there is true privatisation, must government regulate land? It is contradictory. The Land Use Act is not serving any useful purpose.”