Land

are concentrated in large commercial agribusiness estates. According to the Oxfam report a temperature increase of 2.5 degrees centigrade by 2080 will put an estimated 60 million additional people in Africa at risk of hunger. A higher rise would put 80 million at risk. The major powers are encouraged to commit greater emergency assistance more rapidly, to purchase food locally, and to secure more long-term aid for agricultural investment as most of the promises made by Western governments failed to materialize.

i. The physical concept sees land as the physical expression of the nation state, which includes the physical soil, natural resources like water, trees, animals, rocks, minerals, fixed structures and the space above the land.

ii. The legal concept is defined and determined by law. It sees land from the point of view of nature, quantum, duration, distribution, ownership rights and duties attached to land.

iii. The abstract concept is derived from the physical immobility of land. The static nature of land has considerable influence on how decisions are affected on the use of land.

iv. The socio-political concept regards land as a nation of people, that is, as town, or community within a socio-political framework.

v. The spiritual concept attaches religious or spiritual value to the land, and the rural dweller’s life is not complete without these values. Because the livelihood depends largely on land, many rural dwellers in Nigeria believe that there is deity (god) in the land.

vi. The economic concept maintains that land is the major source of man’s wealth, the natural resources of raw materials that are needed for the daily requirement of our food, fibre and energy. Given such wide-ranging connotation, it is not astonishing that land ownership, for the bulk of rurality is the primary determinant of degree of wealth, social status, access to power, and in many instances, even elemental survival. According to Igbozurike (1986), land being the essential fulcrum of rural existence, how the land is handled often has a very significant bearing on rural development.

Land is therefore variously defined in line with individual’s predictions, orientation, occupation and ideology. Igbozurike (1986), Lanre (1991) and Ker (1995) stated that, land means many things to many people and the meaning whether ascribed or inherent, assumes greater profundity with the degree of rurality. Land therefore, is defined as including the sum

total of the natural and man-made resources over which possession of the earth’s surface gives control. This includes the entire earth’s surface, water and ice as well as ground, in addition to building sites, farms, soil and forest, mineral deposits and water resources. It also involves such natural phenomena as access to sunlight, rain, wind and changing temperature and location with respect to markets and other areas. Moreover, it includes all the man-made improvements that are attached to the surface of the earth and cannot be easily separated from it (Barlowe, 1978).

FAO (1994: 30) further considered land as:

"any delineable area of the earth's terrestrial surface, involving all attributes of the biosphere immediately above or below this surface, including those of the near- surface climate, the soil and terrain forms, the surface hydrology (including shallow lakes, rivers, marshes, and swamps), near-surface layers and associated ground water and geo-hydrological reserve, the plant and animal populations, the human settlement pattern and physical results of past and present human activity (terracing, water storage or drainage structures, roads and buildings)."

Geertman and Reitsema (1995) stated that the value of and man’s goals are related so also man’s wants and needs are directly or indirectly related to land. This is to say that land is the mixture of nature and man together with his institutions. Among the physical resources of the earth, land is the major resource. When you talk of land, it is described in terms of its area (size), the quality of the soil, and the physical features of the area (moisture, slope, precipitation, climate, drainage) among others. Land is described in this way because as human beings, we are concerned with the quality of activities that land can support as a resource either at present or in the future. It is for this singular reason that people often ask such questions as:

a) What land use is current?

b) What land use is possible?

c) What land use is best for that particular area?

Campbell (1987) stated that land is one vital natural resource to be utilized for living and working space, and to support the natural flora and fauna. Land is also an integral

part of the environment, as the case with other resources such as waters and space. Therefore land resource management in Nigeria should be strategically oriented toward sustainable development. Land is a strategic ecosystem component for sustainable development. Its limited availability, however, substantially affects national development activities. Problems related to land conservation are mostly concerned with use, utilization, and tenure aspects.

Since land embraces a number of attributes, which are characterized by chains of phenomenal interrelationships and dependence, there are bound to be inevitable changes in the characteristics of land units both on temporal and spatial scale. Furthermore, since land includes past and present human activities on land, which include agricultural land use, it is necessary to very frequently assess and reassess the impact of land use practices on land by man. Despite a considerable achievement in technology both to improve on land management practices and information to assist in the planning and decision-making on land and land use, the net condition of land continues to degrade very rapidly due to rapid population increase and limited legal provision to prevent the environment from being damaged (Abdulkadir, 1993). Irrespective of the fact that the concept of land is being considered in different ways and various ramifications, it is indeed common knowledge to say that, land is the bedrock upon which bulk of human activities are concentrated. It therefore needs to be appraised and assessed at meaningful intervals so that information can be derived for further planning and development purposes.

Ideologies, both local and foreign, seem to have their roots on land. Capitalism thrives on the ownership of land and its usage. Marxism in spite of its economic and political issues in defense of the proletariat, and in the pursuit of classless society, admits of a large-scale ownership and usage of land. Ownership and utilization of land resources is everybody’s

business, and in a capitalist economy such as ours, land ownership and utilization is a legitimate business (Onabanjo 1983, in his occasional speeches as Ogun State Governor, Nigeria).

According to Deckshatulu and George (1993), land from time immemorial has been treated as a measure of wealth, status and power all over the world. In India, during the feudal rules people were awarded favours by the kings in form of titles of ownership for land holdings.

Precisely because of this reason Land has also been the source of many bloody wars and disputes not only between the Nations, kings and families who wanted to establish there supremacy over each other but also between common people as this was the only source of their livelihood. It has been cause of family rifts turning brothers into enemies. It has also led to disputes running through generations unresolved, attributed to lack of proper land management systems, poor record keeping, negligence on part of those who were supposed to be responsible for Land Management and also an inefficient judiciary.

They further reiterated further that land has also served as a strong tool for manipulation and exploitation of the poor. It has also been a root cause of many a malpractice carried out by those who were rich and influential which results in an exorbitant loss of revenue to the government each year, year by year. People have shown irrigated areas as non-irrigated, fertile lands as barren, curtailed the crop yields by declaring lesser hectarage of cultivated land.

There are numerous instances where these perjuries are performed in cognizance with the revenue collectors who form the lowest link in the chain of revenue officials and are primarily responsible for the accuracy in cadastral database.