The Land Use Decree, which gives control of land allocation to government, caused lopsided allocations that favoured land grabbers who generated insecurity in the country, a security expert, Professor Tukur Muhammed-Baba of the Department of Sociology, Federal University, Birnin Kebbi, has said.
He spoke at the Institute of Security Studies (ISS) in Abuja recently when he delivered a paper on ‘Transhuman and International Migration: Challenges for National Security and Development in Nigeria’.
He said elite land grabbers, retired military generals and former presidents were allocated huge tracts of land leaving farmers and pastoralists little to survive on.
He said, “The enactment of the Land Use Decree facilitated land grab because it vested all land on government, allowed individual acquisition and the alienation of the livestock sub-sector.
“Urban elite also began to acquire and own livestock but entrusted the management of these to trans-human pastoralists,” he added.
He said that was compounded by the emergence of land grab by corporate entities and well-connected elite.
He noted that emanating from these are episodes of communal conflicts, violence over access to or exclusion from land, markets and other natural resources.
However, Muhammed-Baba recommended that the traditional pastoralists must change and adjust to changes in the environment.
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