Estate valuers want Land Use Act repealed
Category: Property
Land management experts have called on the Federal Government to immediately commence the process that will lead to the repeal of the Land Use Act (LUA) if it is desirous of solving the acute shortage of accommodation in the country.
Taking a holistic look at the problem of housing in the country, members of the Nigerian Institution of Estate Surveyors and Valuers, Lagos State Branch, who gathered in Ikeja on Wednesday, also advised the state government to suspend the implementation of the Lagos Tenancy Law, 2011.
These positions were canvassed at the Mandatory Continuous Professional Development workshop organised by the institution’s Faculty of Land Administration and the Lagos branch. The theme of the forum was: ‘Land administration and management in the emerging Lagos mega city.’
According to participants at the workshop, the LUA that makes the governor of a state the trustee of all land in the state is a stumbling block to efforts to solve the nation’s housing problem, and as such, should be repealed.
They also said the new Lagos Tenancy Law was inimical would not encourage investment into the housing sector in the state.
A lecturer in the Department of Estate Management, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Prof. Bioye Aluko, who delivered a paper titled: ‘Legal framework for land market regulation in an emerging mega city,’ said Nigeria, being more of a capitalist economy and moving towards a private-driven economy, would require legislative instruments that tend towards free enterprise market.
According to him, the LUA should be repealed because it is a socialist policy in a capitalist economy, adding that it had been criticised as an urban legislation, which only superficially touched the land tenure problem in the country.