Systematic Land Titling and Registration in Nigeria: Geoinformation Challenges

SUMMARY The Land Reform aspect of the Transformation Agenda of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and the mandates of the Presidential Technical Committee on Land Reform (PTCLR) are presented and briefly discussed. The pivot of the land reform agenda is the systematic land titling and registration of all land parcels in Nigeria with a view to creating a land market economy, towards empowering the rural dwellers whose asset, land, is currently locked up as “dead capital” due to lack of relevant titles. The country is poorly mapped and there is the dire need for large scale topographical database, thus making geoinformation and cadastration the central issues in systematic land titling and registration. The paper looks into and discusses the challenges of geoinformation, cadastral mapping, systematic survey, boundary systems and boundary demarcations as they relate to systematic land titling and registration in Nigeria. It is recommended that adequate mapping of the entire country and creation of digital topographical database be carried out to drive the land reform process; and that the fixed boundary system is adopted using GNSS and the CORS established nationwide for data capture. The need to involve relevant professionals and use best practices in the implementation of the systematic land titling is underscored.