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- Title
Aliens' Acquisition of Land in Nigeria: An Incursion into the Evolving Jurisprudence.
- Authors
Ogbuabor, Chukwunweike A.; Ajah, Damian U.; Nwafor, Anthony O.
- Abstract
Sovereign nations generally exert control over land within the individual nation's boundaries. This is done for a variety of reasons including the political and economic. There is nothing wrong with that as the essence of sovereignty lies in exclusivity. Economic considerations, however, demand some level of relaxation of government control on land for investment purposes to galvanise development. Such relaxation of control is usually entrenched in the enabling law that regulates land administration. Nigeria has witnessed such regulatory land instruments operated in different regions of the country from the colonial regime until the unifying Land Use Act of 1978. The Nigerian courts' interpretations of the provisions of that Act have continued to attract controversy, not least the recent Supreme Court decision in Huebner suggesting that aliens cannot hold interest in land in Nigeria. The article dissects that decision, highlighting the social and economic implications with inferences drawn from cognate jurisdictions, arriving at the conclusion that the Supreme Court could not be right in its interpretation of that piece of Nigerian legislation and that the social and economic implications of such decisions cannot be underestimated.
- Subjects
NIGERIA; REAL property acquisition; JURISPRUDENCE; ECONOMIC impact; SOCIAL impact; LEGAL judgments; YORUBA (African people)
- Publication
African Journal of International & Comparative Law, 2021, Vol 29, Issue 1, p154
- ISSN
0954-8890
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.3366/ajicl.2021.0355