Unlocking Dead Capital and Creating Property Rights

One of the challenges facing the Buhari administration is widespread poverty across the land. The situation appears to have been worsened by the failure of successive governments to implement effective poverty alleviation measures that take into account the asset classes available to our teeming masses and how best to get those assets work for those who own them and ensuring, in the process, that such assets become veritable instruments in the empowerment of the rural masses.

Sadly, over the years successive governments at both the state and federal levels have only been involved recurring tokenist measures in striving to empower the rural masses. Such handouts have done so little to empower the majority of our poor citizens in a holistic, sustainable manner.

Across the country, we are faced with huge challenges of a cumbersome, unorganized land tenure system that is not transparent and reliable. The situation is worsened by the fragmented ownership of land in most rural areas.

With the town planning function largely restricted to the towns, most rural communities are unplanned thereby leading to a haphazard development of such areas. With the exception of the very old cities that were planned during the colonial Era and a few others that were planned following the creation of new states, Nigeria has been faced with a situation where land acreages outside the initial city/town development plans have been turned into slums and despicable theaters of unplanned, haphazard development by land owners.

If immediate, remedial steps are not taken, what is left of our country would be turned into slums in the near future. Regrettably, whilst other nations continue to evolve into modern states through proper planning of their physical environments, amongst others, we continue to wallow in the haphazard development of our towns and villages to the detriment of our citizens.

It is instructive to note that there exists a rich repertoire of knowledge in the area and yet our leaders continue to ignore the lessons from other climes. Scholars like Prof. Hernando De Soto, a Peruvian and founder of the Institute for Liberty and Democracy, Lima Peru have long documented the far reaching implications which the grant of property rights would have in alleviating poverty .And yet we fail to take advantage of such basic principles in crafting an effective Poverty Alleviation Program.

What Needs to Be Done….
For the new administration, there is a huge opportunity to transform the landscape of the entire country into well planned settlements and developments through a comprehensive town planning initiative that would see every inch of the country duly mapped out with proper planning for infrastructure and common services. Alongside this programme, a nationwide geographic information system would be put in place to document ownership/title to such land.

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