In Abuja, Nigeria, restrictive formal property rights have constraint indigenes’ access to municipal infrastructure and facilities, while the use of land holding as collateral against loans from formal financial institutions have often seem far away for them.
For close to 1 million indigenes of the Federal Capital Territory, making a distinction between the terms resettlement and settlement is not easy. The only obvious difference is found where one is speaking of the category of people under consideration. Once viewed as peripheral, these locals have become valuable in the spatial planning of the Africa’s most beautiful city. In terms of settlement, any tract of land that are newly reclaim or cleared or was previously cultivated or inhabited, the authority allocated such for estate development or more readily, a government official residence. The residing government officials are settled. However, if another area has been under some kind of serious agriculture in the form of large land holdings the owner of which have since been dispossessed of plantation or where population are sparse or extensive agriculture only was practiced, then those displaced invariably anticipates resettlement.
Ironically, Nigerian government officials moving from other locations to the federal capital territory may easily become settled, but the resettlement of the displaced indigenes in order to bring them into the main stream of the local economy and offering them the opportunity to integrate into the society is yet to be achieved.
In their present abode, the restrictive formal property rights, and tenure system arising from past land policies have consigned the majority of the households to life within the informal urban settlement. In these areas, land rights are not recognized by the government, meaning that residents find it very difficult to enjoy benefits normally enjoyed by inhabitants of the planned urban areas. Such benefits especially access to municipal infrastructure and facilities, the use of land holding as collateral against loans from formal financial institutions have often seem far away for them.
The market led land resettlement, or ‘willing buyer’, ‘willing seller’ as is currently practiced in Nigeria, is a World Bank principle brought into being by Deiniger K. and Binswanger H, both of the World Bank. The plan is a market oriented system; willing seller will transfer the land to wiling buyer at a prevailing market price and paid 100 per cent spot cash. This cash emanated from these transactions are not recycled in the resettlement programme.
For these indigenes, the journey to the promised land has become a dream that has taken on a flight, many of whom have become under or unemployed as a result of displacement and they now account for 60 per cent of the rural population in the city.
While motivation remained high, coordination among stakeholders, more especially between the federal territory administration, its departments and area council and private sector organsations for the provision of supporting infrastructure facilities such as roads, electricity, water, telecommunications services is not sufficient. In some instances, the settlers were left to provide the much needed infrastructures leading to increased costs of resettlement. Information available to the media reveals that the income of the settlers are barely enough for the purchase of land in the capital territory, and for the indigenes, assistance in the acquisition of plots of available farm land remained the only way out. So far, records at the Federal Capital City shows that, as at 2007, a total of 320,420 Rights of Occupancy were granted to individuals and groups on the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. Whereas a total of 1105,701 applications were received. Out of the rights of Occupancy that were issued only 150,000 were actually issued Title Deed Plans (TDPs). Before the year 2008, as a result of undue desperation from the public for plot of land in service area of the city, some unscrupulous people took advantage of the situation and thus set up a parallel land office or ministry and issue out fake title documents.
Currently, the locals’ communal settings in the city tend to be concentrated, a situation where dwelling houses are clustered next to each other in villages within the city. Under this condition, settlers don’t stay far away from the service centres; they have connections to the public utility services such as water, electricity, with very high community spirit among neighbors of different background, and their families are less vulnerable to dangers.
A local official believes that local settlers have tended to rely on the municipal authority for support as paternalistic policies are being applied. He further goes on to say that not only do such policies result in increase cost of settlements; they also discourage self mobilization and undermine settler’s commitment to self reliant and development. In Nigeria, work incentive and family programme are not given adequate weight and even the settlements agencies does not provide the settlers with their basic needs. The settlements provided in some locations so far were maintained as relief camps, and this promotes apathy and dependency among settlers, and adversely affected settler economic performance. However, the continued dependency on the settlement agency for their basic needs, and the inability of the men to be self reliant led most of the settler to leave the settlements presumably for profitable ventures as well as out rightly selling off their piece of land or homes for pittance.
Another municipal official is of the opinion that – making the right decision as to the most suitable farm size and type in a resettlement is of utmost importance. On the one hand, if the farms are too small, they may be unable to provide the farmers with adequate livelihood. But the opposite is known to happen. In Mokwa scheme, Northern Nigeria, most settlers were given so much land that weeding the farm land by their families proves impossible.
In terms of public infrastructure and services – research has proven that the provision of basic services can lure and encourage settlers to stay in resettlements. Depending on the spontaneous and integrated mode of land resettlement, the following social, economic, and cultural amenities needs to be provided: water supply, access roads, mean of transportation for goods and people, agricultural materials and inputs such as tractors, implements, seeds, fertilisers, marketing facilities, schools, medical aids, shops, processing plants for agricultural produce, supply workshops, electricity, public halls for meetings, churches, burial ground, play grounds, and sport fields.
Problems confronting resettlement programmes
At the moment, most indigenes tend to have a high expectation of the resettlement programme, however, when resettlement performance is low and target achievement is poor, settler are disappointed they naturally tend to abandon resettlement and seek better opportunities elsewhere. In an appraisal of the current municipality resettlement plan, officials concluded that the programme wasn’t able either to emerge as an agricultural development or raise the standard of living of the resettlers. The apathy on the part of resettler on agricultural development and the discouraging environmental condition of the resettlement project, indicate the resettler are just waiting to acquire land ownership certificates in order to sell their allocated land and go elsewhere. In farming settlements where production target have not been reached, income in the resettlement areas was considerably below the target levels, and inadequate to meet the settlers needs. As a result many of them, particularly, the males and young women have been abandoning the resettlement in search of work elsewhere leaving behind children and older family members so that they can take advantage of the free education and housing facilities made available in the settlement. Also, the lack of basic facilities such as housing, drinking water, roads, (essential for marketing) and irrigation, and the scarcity of non-agricultural employments, are among the major factors that have prompted people to abandon the project.
In addition, the availability of employment opportunities and the chances of earning some money (in agricultural production, mining, construction work, and nearby farms), is of critical importance to the success of the resettlement. As such failure to provide non-farm employment has particularly distressing consequences. It has been argued that the availability of non-farm employment assist the settler in the first few years of subsistence, and thereafter a means with which to invest in order to raise the productivity level of the land. In some cases, young men and women who have grown up in the resettlement scheme became frustrated due to lack of employment opportunities.
Land concentration
Land concentration is another serious problem, which result from settlers selling their land. Some indigenes sold their land immediately after receiving their titles. Land concentration defeat many of the aims of the resettlement programme such as providing land for the landless and promoting equality in Land and income distribution because the same people who buys land are the same people who own it before thus creating inequitable (skewed) land ownerships. Many of those who sell their land end up as labourers.
High settlement costs
More so, most of the resettlement programmes that have been started the world over proves expensive to implement. Henceforth the high costs of resettlements programme have proved to be biggest challenge to settlement planners. In this regard, it has been estimated that the cost of settling one family could be as high as approximately US 12,000. Further more, the target of settling large families could cost the government much more a year. At this time, these costs for a country as Nigeria represent a serious drain on government resources, which it could ill afford. These two examples show that resettlements programme are very expensive and as such care and caution have be exercise in running them.
It has been observed that approximately over 2 million indigenes and non-indigenes are in need of resettlement, however, the period during which these peoples are to be resettled is yet to be defined or stated. In the federal capital territory, majority of the indigenes were to be resettled in areas where they don’t have access to farm land because the several million of hectares of the adjoining land have already being offered to other people under a willing buyer, willing seller programme in the city centre of the federal capital territory. However, it is believed that for the effective settlement of these categories of people, such adjoining piece of land need to be repurchase to enable the farmers acquire a farmland in their respective communities. This will in the long run create the climate for the self reliance and sustainability of the resettlement programme.
At the moment, there are some discrepancies in the acceptance of the resettlement process in the federal capital territory. While most civil servants agreed that the development of estates and official residences in the city by the government has address the issues of resettlement in the area, others especially disagree believing that the pace of resettlement has rather been slow and has not integrate the local communities. From the angle of the communities, their families may not be self reliant if the consideration of farm land are not taken into consideration in the resettlement process.
There is need for the harmonization of resettlement process within the capital territory among indigenes and non-indigenes alike in order to help create an integrated communities where the possibility of social adaptation is very high in conformity with the vision of our forefathers that the federal capital territory is the centre of unity, says a respondent.
Comments are closed.