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A Study Of Customary Land Law And Tenure Practices Of Six Communities Of The Lower Benue River Valley Of Nigeria
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CHAPTER ONE
1.0 INTRODUCTION
Customary land tenure practices are
the accepted rules of practices in particular communities in terms of
the customs, customary laws and norms which guide how land is used that
avoid friction among the people. The communities in this study are
agrarian area in the middle belt of Nigeria where land is primarily used
for farming. These communities are the Idomas and the Tivs of Benue
State, and the Alagos, Eggons, Madas and Gwandaras of Nasarawa State.
These communities are a continuous land mass cut only by River Benue.
Customary
land law is worth investigating despite the existence of the Land Use
Act1 in Nigeria. This is because the Act itself recognizes
customary
law in land administration2. Another reason for studying customary land
law in Nigeria at the present time is because the provisions of the Act
are not known in the rural areas and even in the urban and sub-urban
areas where the provisions of the Act are known, tjhey are not
appreciated. This is most evident in the Area courts of
1 Cap L1, Laws of the Federation 2004
2 S.21 and the definition of “occupier†in S.50, Land Use Act Cap L1, 2004.
Northern Nigeria where majority of land cases are instituted and decided on the basis of customary laws.
This
study is aimed at studying the customary land laws and tenures of six
communities in the Nigerian Lower Benue River Valley. The study was
designed to investigate whether the customary laws in the communities
are the same with those of the more researched communities in Nigeria.
The second aim is to investigate whether the customary laws and
practices with regard to land differ among the communities inter se.
There are other ethnic tribes in the two States (Benue and Nasarawa),
such as the Igedes in Benue State and the Ebirra Koto, Yeskwa, Afor and
Gwari in Nasarawa State. However, the communities selected for this
study are the more prominent ones occupying a continuous block of land,
broken only by River Benue.
1.1 HISTORY AND SOCIOLOGY OF THE COMMUNITIES COVERED BY
THE STUDY
Law,
particularly customary laws , reflect the history and sociological
nature of the people. Dias3 reports that Savigny emphasized that the
muddled and outmoded nature of a legal system was usually due to a
failure to comprehend its history and evolution. He advised that the 3
Dias, R. W. M., Jurisprudence, 5th Edition, Butterworths, 1985, p. 377.
essential
prerequisite to the reform of German law, was a deep knowledge
of its history. Savigny4, who was himself a Prussian Minister
of Legislation, said:
The
existing matter will be injurious to us so long as we ignorantly submit
to it; but beneficial if we oppose to it a vivid creative energy –
obtain the mastery over it by a thorough grounding in history and thus
appropriate to ourselves the whole intellectual wealth of preceding
generations.
He then went to elaborate the theory of the Volksgeist
(legal nationalism based on national ethos or the peoples’ higher
values) by contending that it is the broad principles of the system that
are to be found in the
spirit of the people and which becomes
manifest in customary rules. It is against this background that the
following summary of the history and sociological backgrounds of the
peoples of this study are given below.
4 Savigny, Introduction to
The System of Modern Roman Law, quoted by Dias R.W.M., Jurisprudence,
5th Ed., Butterworths, London, 1985.
1.1.1 History and Sociology of The Tivs
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ABSRACT - [ Total Page(s): 1 ]This study is aimed at studying the customary land laws and tenurial practices of the communities of the Nigerian Lower Benue River valley. These communities are the Idomas and the Tivs of Benue state, and the Alagos, Eggon, Mada, and Gwandara peoples of Nasarawa State. The methodology adopted was a survey approach which incorporated primary data captured through questionnaire and interviews. The work has shown that in the area of study, all the land were acquired originally by settlement on vir ... Continue reading---
