Special focus

Land use in Nigeria

Prior to the Land Use Decree of 7978, the Nigerian land tenure system

had become the object of intense attack and defence by vested interests

promoting their views on changes in the tenure system which would best

increase food and hbre production. The many points of view could be classified

into two opposing camps: those who regarded the tenure system as inimical to

agri~uiturai development with emphasis on food productions and, those who

argued that the tenure system was not a hindrance at that time. This article

provides background information on issues leading to the land tenure reform in

Nigeria; points out some of the shortcomings of past direct government

control and management of land, and the Land Use Decree; suggests needed

modifications to the Land Use Decree’s implementation; and, derives some

food production policy implications.

The Land Use Decree of 29 March 1978, issued by the federal military government,’ stipulates that the Military Governor of each state is to be the sole controller and manager of all urban lands within that state, and all other land subject to the Decree, is under the control of the local government in- charge of the area where the said land is situated.* The specific objectives of the Decree include:

l The assertion and preservation of rights of all Nigerian’s to the lands of Nigeria.

e The assurance, protection and preservation of the rights of all Nigerian’s to use and enjoy the land and its natural fruits in sufhcient quantity to enable them to provide for their sustenance.

Although the decree was promulgated in 1978, there is little or no evidence of its widespread implementation. Thus, it has made marginal, if any, impact on food production in Nigeria.

In general, Nigerian agriculture is organized around customary land tenure, small family farms and family labour. This predominantly peasant system of ag~cultur~ production is characterized by low farm incomes, low levels of capacity to satisfy food and fibre needs and nutritional inadequacy on a per capita basis.’ The index of per capita food production has declined almost 13% in Nigeria since 1969 and

has shown no improvement in the last 4 years.4

The food production deficit for Nigeria was calculated at only 2% of consumption in 1975. However, estimated projections of the deficit in 1990 range from 17.1 to 20.5 million tonnes cereal equivalent basis or 35 to 39% of consumption.5

Prior to the Land Use Decree of 1978, the Nigerian land tenure system had become the object of intense attack and defense by vested interests promoting their views on changes in the tenure system which would best increase food and fiber production. Ijere6 recognized five schools of thought: those who did not consider land tenure worthy of the attention paid to it; those who believed that land tenure problems would solve themselves with economic development; the reformist group which advocated that a complete overhaul of the system would usher in a new agricultural era; those who prescribed fundamental research at each stage before changing the tenure system; and the school which advocated that the tenure system be taken as given and agricultural production adapted to it.

Land tenure, food production and marketing policy issues take on far greater importance since the Nigerian government launched the twin programmes of Operation Feed the Nation (OFN) in April 1976 and

Commodity Boards for Foodcrops (Grain and Root Crops) in April 1977. OFN’s major objective is the reduction of food imports through expanded domestic production which will require large imports of fertilizers, farm chemicals, machinery and other inputs.

The Commodity Boards for Grains and Root Crops are complement~y programmes designed ‘ . . . to purchase crops from farmers at prices to be announced by the Government from year to year’.’ Price incentives alone may not be sufficient to increase production if land and labour are not readily available. The Nigerian land tenure system determines how readily land and labour can be combined with modern inputs to increase food production. The structure of agriculture, especially farm size, technology and productivity influences crop and livestock production.

Nigeria’s past land tenure system

The great diversity in cultural and tribal traditions in Nigeria implies that there is no one land tenure system that completely portrays the accepted practices in all the states. However, it appears that the differences in land tenure arrangements are in terms of degree rather than kind. In general, two broad systems existed: the traditional system and the institutionalized system. An exhaustive treatment of these systems is not attempted here, rather their relevant characteristics are highlighted.

The traditional system

This system is characterized by simultaneous communal and private land ownership patterns, ie the land around the town (or vihage) is owned partly by the individual families and in part by the community as a whole. Land belonging to the extended family is shared among the males (the household heads) according to custom which varies within and among tribes.

In Okpuje, Anambra State, Obibuaku* found that the village could be divided into three distinct segments: Compound land is situated around the dwelling houses often planted in garden crops and cocoyams and sometimes contains such economic crops as

306 FOOD POLICY November 1980

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arrangements on some perceived adverse effects on agricultural development, particularly food production. Criticisms centred on three assumed defects of past tenure systems: underutilization of land; uneconomic land holdings; and non-alienation of land.

oranges, bananas and oil-palm trees. This land is the personal property of the household head and is inherited by his male children. Inner farm land is closest to the village and outside the compound land. It contains many economic trees such as mangoes, palm trees, oranges, etc and comprises several pieces of land regularly farmed by individuals recognized as their owners. These parcels of farms are usually acquired by inheritance and sometimes as a pledge, gift or lease, but occasionally by purchase. Common fund is the more distant, consolidated, commun~ly-owned land administered by the elders. Allocation to individuals is by established need and only on a temporary basis. It is never inherited. Part of this land comprises the uncleared forests, sacred forests and village boundaries that are not normally farmed, but are used instead as sources of firewood, fencing materials, or for other reasons (eg shrine for the local deity. or boundary demarkations).

Common land

By tradition, each family is entitled to a piece of land on which to raise foodstuffs sufficient for the family.p Where this requirement cannot be satisfied within the extended family, the elders may donate a part of the common land, or the household may approach another family with ‘surplus’ land for a part of the ‘unused’ farm land. Payment for the use of this land is made in cash and/or goodwill, a pot of palm-wine and tobacco. Additional commercial farm land is obtained in the same way, the main difference being that migration to the more distant fertile areas may be involved.

Farm size is limited by the family’s labour force and ability to hire temporary labour, population density, and the household’s resourcefulness and equipment. Traditional sources of inexpensive labour have been reduced by the need for primary schooling and migration of teenagers to urban areas in search of white-collar jobs. Thus, the main labour force of many family farms are the man and his wife, or wives, who are often advanced in age, and during the weekends, children in the elementary schools.

The institutionalized system

Before the Land Use Decree, land could be publicly acquired by the federal and state government, a local authority, or one of the statutory bodies vested with power to acquire land. There are salient differences between the Northern and Southern States with regard to procedural matters. In the Northern States, public land acquisition was governed by the Land Tenure Law of 1962. This law operated on the premise that the former Emirs (ie rulers) owned all the land in the North.

Now that the state and federal governments have superseded these Emirs, what belonged to the Emirs passed on to them. Consequently, no compensation was paid for the land itself. However, the headman of each community was paid for the unexhausted improvements, eg factories, houses and crops, or the disruption of grazing rights.*O

In the South, land ownership was in part familial and in part communal; there were few, if any, central authorities who owned all the village land. Thus, land could be acquired by government and paragovernmental agencies, but only for established public purposes such as schools, hospitals, farm settlements and roads. In all cases, compensation was paid both for the land itself and improvements.

Nigeria’s tenure systems have been undergoing gradual, but marked changes. Population pressure, especially in parts of the Eastern States, has made it impossible for all males to inherit a part of the family land. This is because there is a limit to which land can be reasonably subdivided. Such landless males resort to purchasing land from families with surplus land. Moreover, the powers and prestige of the traditional rulers and elders, with special reference to land transactions, have been eroded by social forces derived from the powers of material possession and education. Finally, urbanization has led to the migration of literate people from the rural areas giving rise to absentee landlords willing to Iease or sell parts of their land for cash. These occurrences are expected to accelerate with economic development.

Those in favour of land reform based their criticisms of the past tenure

Unde~~iza~on of land

Nigerian agriculture is primarily run on a subsistence basis, with hoes and machetes as the main farm equipment. In the absence of widespread applications of fertilizers, the fallow system (sometimes termed shifting cultivation) is utilized to replenish the soil. In the fallow system, a parcel of land is cleared, farmed for about three years and then allowed to revert to bush. During the period of fallow, usually five years or more, soil nutrients are replenished by natural forces. The bush is cleared and farmed at the end of this fallow period. Currently, the number of years of fallow have decreased and are non-existent in many areas because of population pressure on land. Thus, many of the uncultivated bush areas observed by Oluwasanmi were probably exhausted farm iands left to be replenished by nature, rather than farm lands which were unavailable to enterprising farmers. i’

The communal tenure system is often criticized for its underutilization of land. However, this is a fallacious argument since the communal tenure system relates to land inheritance rather than usage. The main reason for the fallow system of farming is to restore soil fertility. Consequently, charges against the tenure system for underutilization of land are in error. Extensive adoption of organic and inorganic fertilizers will facilitate yearly use of farm lands, thus ensuring maximum utilization of farm lands.i* Past Nigerian tenure arrangement did not preclude this, but the high cost of inorganic fertilizers and other inputs may limit that opportunity without price incentives such as those envisioned under the Commodity Boards for root crops and grains. However, price incentives alone are not enough.

The school of thought in favour of a new tenure system points to the average farm size of 2.5 acres as ‘uneconomic’

FOOD POLICY November 1980 307

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and believes that the panacea to increased food production in Nigeria lies in a new tenure system which will make possible large scale farming perhaps similar to those of North America. The central theme appears to be the assumed advantages of economies of size to be derived from the larger farms. Unfortunately, evidence as to the economies of size in farming is

inconclusive.i3 Essang noted the well known problem of the paucity, fragmentary nature and high degree of inaccuracy characteristic of Nigerian agricultural statistics.i4

In 1966, Oluwasanmi estimated the average farm size for the country to be between 2 and 5 acres.” A survey by the Federal Office of Statistics in 1963- 64 revealed that more than 58% of farmers in Northern Nigeria, 12% in the East and 22% in the West and Midwest, had farms of more than 2.5 acres. A survey of three villages in the heavily populated Eastern Region of Nigeria indicated that the average farm size ranged from 0.98 to 5.9 acres. Farm size increased as population density fell from 1 200 to 250 persons per square kilometre.i6

The important factors impinging on farm size must be taken into consideration before the optimum farm size can be determined. However, the experience of large scale farms in Nigeria and other parts of Africa suggest that sudden transformation of a subsistence farmer into a large scale commercial producer results in mistakes and large scale disasters.

As Ijere pointed out, the experience with plantation agriculture has been one of mismanagement, fraud and uneconomic investments.” The failures of large scale farms, such as Mokwa Plantation, Ohaji and Uzo-Uwani farm settlements, should be constant reminders that a subsistence farmer with large acreages and sophisticated farm equipment is not automatically transformed into an efficient and economic producer. Consequently, given the state of agriculture in Nigeria, average farm size may be near the current optimum with 2-5 acres.

Non-alienation of farm land

The concept of non-alienation of farm land conveys the impression that

farmland cannot be sold to outsiders of a community. Its genesis goes far back in history when there were considerable intertribal wars and people were highly suspicious of others outside the clan. In the widest application, alienation implies outright sale of land by transference of fee-simple title from seller to buyer; a holder of fee-simple title has unlimited rights including the right to sell or mortgage the land.

In a narrower sense, alienation can be restricted to a specified period of time such as three years, a specific crop, or to known persons in a kinship group. This latter type of alienation is often termed renting or leasing. The holder of such a user right cannot sell or mortgage the land and must abide by the specified conditions. However, non- alienation of farmland has neither prevented land sales nor restricted enterprising farmers from expanding their farm operations.

Pledging

Non-alienation of farmland does not

proscribe land sales among community members. Thus, indigenous enterprising farmers are not prevented from acquiring extra farm land from fellow community members. Also, it does not prohibit short-term transference of land to strangers in the form of lease or pledge. In practice, the rule of non- alienation has often been circumvented. Evidence abounds of land transactions involving cash and also in the form of pledging, borrowing and gift giving.‘* Ijere also noted that as long as there is an attractive price, more land can be bought and sold and put into any type of cultivation.i9

In the former Western Nigeria, all the 99 acres of land allocated by the state between 1959 and 1962 were made to 48 ministers of state, and high party and government officials. In Lagos, and until 1972, the Lagos Executive Development Board controlled public lands allocation within the city in addition to its function of town planning. The general pattern of its land allocation showed the main beneficiaries as politicians, lawyers, doctors and businessmen.21 Government plot allocations in the former East Central State from 1970 to 1975 resulted in the allocation of plots to privileged groups,

politicians, public servants, and their friends and relatives.

The fact that land had become a transferable commodity in both thickly and thinly populated parts of Nigeria, has been noted by Essang.20 He commented that in the Southeast, most of the food available in the capital, Calabar, came from Ibibio and Ibo farmers - emigrant strangers who owned larger farms than the local people. Considerable in-roads have been made on the non-alienation of farmland concept. As the economy became more monetized and commercialized, the sale of land as an economic undertaking would become the norm; not all land- owning Nigerians aspire to be farmers.

These examples lead to the conclusion that there is a tendency for state controlled lands to be allocated to privileged groups of people who are essentially non-farmers. In effect, there is mobility of land from farm to non- farm users. This may have adverse consequences for food production if land is not put into crop production. Okpala argues that:

. . . public ownership and control as embodied in the Land Use Decree of 1978, does not necessarily (by itself) ensure the achievement of those objectives . . . the

realization of the potentials . . . depend more on the degree of fairness, integrity and equity involved in the administration or implementation of the degree, rather than on the fact of the Decree as such.**

Theoretical considerations

Land reform, since the second world war, has taken different directions in various countries, including: breaking the economic and political power of big

Direct government control

The notion of direct government control and management of some land in Nigeria is not an innovation. What the Land Use Decree of 1978 introduced was total government management of all land and expropriation of user rights previously exercised by households and individuals. Past experience shows that most of the land expropriated by various governments were allocated, not to farmers, but to politicians, civil servants, doctors and important personalities who have little or no ties to agriculture or food production. A few examples, suffice to illustrate this point.

308 FOOD POLICY November 1980

Special focus

from the requirement that they be used for agricultural purposes.

landlords (Latin America); collectivization of agriculture (socialist states); land distribution (eg Japan); mitigation of rural poverty and assurance of group survival in agriculture.23

In much of tropical Africa the issue is whether the traditional systems of agriculture are to be replaced or be transformed; whether alien systems of tenure and farming are to be imported to displace the traditional systems on an ad hoc basis, or whether and how the experience, customs and conventional wisdom of the cultivators is to be honoured and moulded in an evolutionary manner.24

In agricultural development, land reform aims essentially at removing or ameliorating rural poverty. This rural poverty problem can be dichotomized into production and marketing (distribution) problems. The production problem centres around increasing farm output through intensive and/or extensive land use system, while marketing (distributing) problems revolve around increasing prices received and reducing prices paid by farmers. Land tenure reform is directly tied to the production problem and indirectly to the distribution problem.

The fact that concentration of land ownership and income distribution patterns are linked with low incomes and levels of living for the majority of rural families is well documented in literature.25 If land reform has any meaning, it must mean an improvement in the access routes that rural people have to future income and the security of such access.26 Thus, proposals for land reform should always be viewed in terms of positive contributions toward the welfare of the rural people.

In terms of food production, John Mellor*’ suggested several requirements that land tenure change should entail to increase food production:

0 Increase in total land area cultivated. 0 Transference of land from people

with low incentive to farm to those with substantial incentive.

0 Increased intensity of land use in agriculture.

0 Land consolidation.

If past experience is an indication of the future, the 1978 Land Use Decree does not guarantee most of these

requirements for increased food

production. On the contrary, if the mobility of land from farm to non-farm users is continued, the decree assures reduced food production capability in Nigeria. The tendency to allocate land to non-farmers will violate the first three requirements for increased food production accompanying land tenure changes. Consequently, it will be necessary to modify the Land Use Decree so that most of available land will be used for agricultural purposes.

Modifications

The Nigerian Land Use Decree, in appropriating all lands, is depriving the ordinary farmer of his only means of livelihood and tangible asset. If the government wants to increase food production, this will not be achieved by depriving farmers of their farms. The following changes to land use patterns are recommended:

0

People should be allowed to keep their compound lands, situated around the dwelling houses.

the Inner farm land, land closest to the villages and outside the

compounds lands, should be retained by their present owners provided that each owner does not have more than five acres (or an amount to be empirically determined to be sufficient to provide subsistence food for an average family). Communally owned land, usually at the outskirts of the villages, should come under the direct control and management of the local government in the area as stipulated by the Land Use Decree. The management of this land should be geared towards encouraging commercial agriculture and projects which are common goods. To avoid past abuses, allocation of land should be by renewable leases only; individuals, private and paragovernmental firms should be allocated parcels of land on condition that these parcels of land be used for agricultural purposes only. Failure to comply within a reasonable period of time would result in the revocation of the lease. Land immediately around urban areas should be used for urban expansion, and hence, be excluded

Conclusion

Land tenure reform will enhance food and agricultural production when it encourages intensive food and fibre production. The Land Use Decree of 1978 does not appear to contain mechanisms to avoid past abuses of land redistribution. There does not seem to be any connection between the Land Use Decree and the new programmes, such as the Commodity Boards for Food Crops. The economic structure of Nigeria and its land use patterns are changing rapidly as revenues from the petroleum industry enter the economy. A well thought out plan for increased food production and land distribution has not been formulated which will ensure a reduction in food imports and a growth in domestic output. If anything, the Nigerian farmer may be confused by the proliferation of decrees and programmes coming from military and civilian governments.

A.N. Chidebelu, G. W. Ames

and E.E. Brown,

Department of Agricultural

Economics,

The University of Georgia College of

Agriculture,

Athens, GA, USA

’ Eddie Iroh, ‘Shagari’s frrst 100 days’, Africa, No 102, February 1980, p 20 and 25. * Federal Republic of Nigeria, Decree No 6: Land Use Decree, 1978, Supplement to Official Gazette Extraordinary, Vol 65, No 14,28 March, 1978. 3 Agricultural Development in Nigeria, 1973.1985. Federal Ministrv of Agriculture and Natural Resources: Joint Plannmg Committee, Lagos, 1974, p 3. a US Department of Agriculture, indices of Agricultural Production in Africa and the Near East, 1967-1976. ERS, Statistical Bulletin No 572, June 1977. 5 International Food Polrcy Research Institute, Food Needs of Developing Countries. Projections of Production and Consumption to 1990, Research Report No 3, IFPRI, Washington DC, December 1977. ’ M.O. Ijere, 100 Years in Search of a Land Tenure Model in Nigeria, Department of Agricultural Management, University of Nigeria, Nsukka. September 1974.

FOOD POLICY November 1980 309

Spe~~al~~cus~ Viewpoint

7 A.J. Adegeye, The commodity board system for food crops: a new dimension

Nigerian Agrtcultura~ Policy’, ~~~ic~,~~~a~ Administratjon, Vol 6, No 3, July 1979,pp 161-167

* LO. Obibuaku, ‘The effect of land tenure on agricultural extension work in some villages of the East Central State’, Oxford Agrarian Studies, Vat 5, No 2, 1976, pp l-6.

’ Segun Famoriyo, ‘Land tenure and food productton in Nigeria’, The Land Tenure Center Newsletter. No 14, June- September 1973.

‘OT.0. Elias, Federal Chief Justice of Nrgena, ‘Public administration of land’, paper presented at the International Seminar on Aspects of Land Tenure in Troptcal Afrrca, Universlt~ of Ibadan, Nigeria, 23-25 July 1972

Viewpoint

” H.A. Oluwasanmi, Agriculture and Nigerian Economic Development, Oxford University Press, Ibadan, 1966. I2 Op tit, Ref 11, p 53. ‘3 Repurt on the Sample Census uf Agriculture, f950-5 1, Nigerian Department of Statistics, Lagos, 1952. ‘4 SM. &sang, ‘Effects of land tenure on labor mobility and employment’, paper presented at the International Seminar on Aspects of Land Tenure in Troptcal Africa, Univer~lty of Ibadan, Nigeria, 23-25 July 1972 Is Op cit. Ref 1 I ” Johannes Lagemann, traditional African Farmiog Systems in Eastern Nigeria. An Analysis of Reaction to lncreasrng Po~~~at~on Pressure, Weltforum Verag, Munich, 1977. I7 Op cif, Ref 6. l8 Up tit, Ref 9, p 15.

The po~jt~~a~ role that food has played in the A f~ha~~stan and fran crises, as we/l as in the UK’s relations with its EEG partners has focused more attention on

international food questions than at any time since the pre-war campaign for

tariff reform. ~nter~atio~al food ~rob~erns invol’ve issues broader and more complex than ending ways of ~5~~~~~~~ wjdespread hungers showily concern

and ~ontr~b~tj~~ some resources to solving someone else’s problem. This

increased awareness of the ~ol~t~ca~ and economic as well as b~ma~itaria~

aspects of the food ~robiem should enable us to recog~~se the need to give

particular attention to proposals such as those made by the Brandt commission’ on world hu~gerand~nternat~o~a~foodquestions.

The Brandt report stresses both the scale of hunger in the Third World and the less widely recognized problem of the rapidly growing dependence of most developing countries, even the poorest with largely rurai populations, on imports of food staples. The extrapolation of these trends implies levels of cereal imports alone by 1990 of 120- 140 million tonnes a year; this is unlikely in terms of the capacity of the smail number of exporting countries to produce exportabte surpluses and the ability of developing countries to finance these BOWS.~

There is a danger of a repetition of the food crisis of 1972-74 in an increasingly interde~ndent world food economy. In that crisis the poorest countries, and the poorest within those

countries, bore the brunt of adjustment in ~nternationai grain markets.3 The gravity of these problems and the risks involved lead the Commission to endorse a programme for combating mass poverty, malnutrition and containing the destabilizing possibilities inherent in the structure and operation of international food markets:

*

e

increasing the capacity of food- importing developing countries, particularly low-income countries to meet their own food requirements through: larger financial flows for investment in agricultural development; agrarian reforms and the development of more appropriate agricultural systems.

International food security

‘90pcit, Ref ?,p 17. 2Q Op cit. Ref 14 ” lfebueme Okpala, ‘The Land Use Decree of 1978: if the past should be prologue’, Journal of Admjffistrat~o~ Overseas, Vol 18, No 1, January 1979, p 18. z2 op tit, Ref 2 1, p 20. 23 Kenneth Parsons, ‘FAO research in contemporary changes in agrarian structure’, LTC Reprint No 706, University of Wjs~onsin~ Madison, November 1973. *4 Peter Darner, ‘Land tenure, income drstributton and productivity interactions’, LX Reprint No 5, University of Wi5con~~n, Madison, p 7. ” Up tit, Ref 24, p 248.

” John fvlellor. Economics

Of

Agr~c~lturai Development Co& Universrty Press, Ithaca, New York, 1966,

arrangements invoicing: an international grains agreement (IGA), larger international emergency reserves and a food import financing facility. More and more predictable food aid, but to be linked to employment creation and agricultural development programmes. Liberalization of trade in food and other agricultural products. More support for international agricultural research.

‘Compassion, solidarity and self-interest all call for the urgent abolition of hunger.‘4 Such a programme is in the mutual interest of Western developed nations, deveioping countries and implicitly the socialist countries. However, it is the Western and OPEC nations that would have to bear the financial and adjustment costs of such changes. The mutuality of interest lies in avoiding the destabilizing effects of a repetition of the 1972-74 crisis and the inflationary impact on the world economy of upward pressure on food prices.

Self-reliant development

The proposals on agricultural development strategies for the Third World, and also those for greater investment in interna~onaj agricultural research, would be almost universally endorsed in principle. The growth of the network of internationa1 centres funded

310 FOOD POLICY November 7980