Land Reform Implementation and Its Impact on the Registration of Property Title and Instrument in Greater Jos Metropolis, Nigeria: 2007 – 2014

Abstract

The government of Plateau State introduced a land reform programme in the Greater Jos Metropolis starting from 2007. However, academic research has given less attention to examining the impact of the reform on the processing of property title and instrument. This study fills the gap by examining the impact of the reform through the following objectives: the first scrutineses the components of reform programme and the successes recorded from its implementation from 2007-2014. The Second objective assesses the impact of the reform on the issuance rate of property title and instrument. To achieve these objectives, the study employs documentary evidence which were mostly obtained from the land registry in Jos. The analysis indicates that the key component of the reforms was the development and deployment of an automated system of land management. This was successfully implemented but the updating of land re-mapping for the study area was still being implemented. Regarding the reform’s impact, the data analysed reveals that land titles (Right of Occupancy and Certificate of Occupancy) were constantly being applied for, from 2007 to 2014, but no corresponding approvals were made except for 2007 when 200 approvals were given and 2009 when two requests were granted. Other transactions-Assignment, Mortgage, Lease, Surrender etc, were carried out without interferences. On the overall, the land reform was seen to be progressive and consistent with the aspiration to shift from the manual approach of processing property title and instrument to a computerised system. However, the benefits were not immediately evident. For this reason, it is recommended that future study should give attention to assessing the benefits of the reform in at the long run.