3.6. Land Use Act

Volume 1 on public law provides an introduction to the Nigerian legal system. The various chapters deal with: introduction and sources of law; jurisprudence and Nigerian perspectives; African customary law; Islamic law; comparative constitutionalism and Nigerian perspectives; citizenship, immigration and administrative law; judicial system and legal profession; criminal law, evidence and civil procedure; statutory marriage and divorce laws; customary marriage and divorce; marriage and divorce under Islamic law; matters of children; gender and law in Nigeria with emphasis on Islamic law. Volume 2 has 25 chapters on private law that includes security of the environment and environmental law, land and property administration, commercial business and trade laws, communication, media and press laws, transportation and carrier laws, law enforcement, armed forces and military laws, investments, and intellectual property.

This study, in nineteen chapters, deals with the various issues pertaining to land law in Nigeria. Namely: Concept of ownership; ownership and communal land holding under customary land tenure; individual land ownership; family land ownership; alienation under customary law; nature of customary tenancy; pledge; the law of property; an overview of the effect of the Land Use Act on customary ownership of land; The Nigerian Land Use Act; Land Use Act 1978; ways of declaration of title to land; legal mortgage; the position of landlord and tenant; the procedure for recovery of premises under the recovery of premises law; classification of right of occupancy; nature of prescription; march towards the reform of the Land Use Act.

The idea of a Restatement is to identify common principles or trends in a particular area of law with the objective of unifying the further development of the law. No other area of law in Nigeria is in need of Restatement as much as Nigeria's customary law. A number of reasons inform this position: (i) the cultural diversity of the country has meant that customary practices differ in so many respects on the same issue; (ii) the oral tradition of the customary system has placed it in the 'endangered species' list; (iii) the paucity of authoritative works on customary law has created a yawning gap for the scholarship in this vital area of law; and (iv) no matter however ignored, customary law continues to play a very significant role in moderating the Nigerian values system in society. Carried out by the Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies this project brings to an end four years of a massive research undertaking involving desk review; field research covering four geo-political zones in Nigeria; collation and analysis of field research findings; testing of field research findings in a stakeholders consultative conference; further desk review to fill in gaps in the literature; and the core restatement work by a select committee of Reporters.

Originally published in 1951, Nigerian Land Law and Custom (now with a new preface by Olusoji Elias), the first of its kind, is an excellent comparative study of the whole system of land tenure in Nigeria. There are, of course, a few anthropological attempts, almost invariably designed as or inspired by Government Reports on some specific areas of the country, and their aim is therefore often administrative or fiscal. This book is accordingly an attempt to create a legal order out of the chaos of lay approaches and to examine and systematize, as far as possible, such principles of indigenous tenure as are discernible in available materials in the light of the growing body of case-law. This book will be of value to students and researchers of African law and custom, and of comparative jurisprudence.

This book addresses core issues of personal property law in Nigeria from a comparative perspective. It offers a detailed account of the laws governing personal property and the different lightweight reforms undertaken mainly through case law before the enactment of the Secured Transactions in Movable Assets Act in 2017. The book draws insights from the United States UCC article 9, being unarguably the first law that introduced the concept of modern secured transactions law, and was influential to many common and civilian law systems in reforming their personal property laws. Given that personal property law is fairly new in Nigeria, and also in Africa in general, the main aim of the book is to provide judges and academic researchers with a rich collection of tested solutions from jurisdictions that have experimented with modern secured transactions law for several decades. The primary and secondary works that were referenced in the book have tracked the different epochal shifts in legal thinking and their significances. This may assist scholars and judges in Nigeria to come up with bespoke interpretations of the Act and solutions to underlying problems on credit and security, that will satisfy the local conditions as opposed to copying the unaltered solutions from the United States and other advanced systems.

This book, which has twenty chapters, Is a collection of essays in honour of Honourable Justice (Mrs) Kate Abiri, Chief Judge of Bayelsa State of Nigeria who has contributed immensely To The rule of law and advancement in the Niger Delta area in particular where the petroleum industry has wrought great devastation in various forms. The law And The regulatory framework governing oil and gas operations in Nigeria are subjected to critical examination, alongside legal challenges in the path of addressing attendant environmental degradation, compensation, human rights, communities and protection of the environment. This is the most comprehensive book on this subject to date.

This book offers a valuable guide to one of the most challenging areas of commercial law, now frequently referred to as secured transactions, with a focus on Nigerian, Canadian and United States perspectives. A debtor’s ability to provide collateral influences not only the cost of the money borrowed, but also in many cases, whether secured lenders are willing to offer credit at all. The book proposes that increasing access to, and indeed, lowering the cost of credit could tremendously boost economic development, while at the same time arguing that this would best be achieved if the legal framework for secured transactions in Nigeria, and of course, any other country with similar experiences, were designed to allow the use of personal property and fixtures to secure credit. Similarly, the creation, priority, perfection, and enforcement of security interests in personal property should be simplified and supported by a framework that ensures that neither the interests of secured lenders nor debtors are hampered, so as to guarantee the continuous availability of affordable credit as well as debtors’ willingness to borrow and do business. The book further argues that in addition to the obvious preference for real property over personal property by secured lenders due to the unreformed secured-transactions legal framework in Nigeria, its compartmentalized nature has also resulted in unpredictability in commerce and the concomitant effects of poor access to credit. Through the comparative research conducted in this book utilizing the UCC Article 9 and Ontario PPSA as benchmarks, the author provides reformers with a repository of tested secured-transactions law solutions, which law reformers in the Commonwealth countries in Africa and beyond, as well as the business community will find valuable in dealing with issues that stem from secured transactions.

Volume 1 on public law provides an introduction to the Nigerian legal system. The various chapters deal with: introduction and sources of law; jurisprudence and Nigerian perspectives; African customary law; Islamic law; comparative constitutionalism and Nigerian perspectives; citizenship, immigration and administrative law; judicial system and legal profession; criminal law, evidence and civil procedure; statutory marriage and divorce laws; customary marriage and divorce; marriage and divorce under Islamic law; matters of children; gender and law in Nigeria with emphasis on Islamic law. Volume 2 has 25 chapters on private law that includes security of the environment and environmental law, land and property administration, commercial business and trade laws, communication, media and press laws, transportation and carrier laws, law enforcement, armed forces and military laws, investments, and intellectual property.