The legal adviser to the Police-Community Relations Committee in Enugu State, Dr Godstime Okafor, has called for a review of the Land Use Act to make it more people-friendly.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!In a lecture titled ‘Security, Land Speculation and Acquisition,’ in Enugu on Thursday, Okafor said the Act had shortchanged many land owner as they were not adequately compensated when the government acquired their land.
In the lecture presented at the 2014 Peace and Conflict Resolution Conference jointly organised by the police and the committee, Okafor posited that before the Act in 1978, the government adequately compensated land owners before acquisition.
Commissioner of Police, Adamu Mohammed Abubakar and the members of the Police
Community Relations Committee, Enugu State Command.
He suggested the amendment of the Act to revert land ownership to the people rather than the government.
He said that if government must acquire land for public good, the owners should be ‘promptly and adequately compensated.
The legal adviser frowned at a situation where the government acquired acres of land and gave a pittance to the owners in the name of compensation, maintaining that this did not augur well with the people.
Also speaking, the Commissioner of Police in the state, Mr Mohammed Abubakar, said that what
caused trouble in land acquisition was injustice, saying that if things were done properly, conflicts would hardly occur.
Abubakar, however, acknowledged that conflicts were inevitable part of the society but that prompt and amiable solutions should be sought as quickly as possible before they degenerates to break down of law and order.
Committee members from all the local government areas in the state attended the conference