Before 29 March 1978 every square metre of Nigeria was owned by somebody — a person, a family, a lineage, a chieftaincy, a community, a corporation, a religious institution, a colonial concession holder, or one of the three regional governments. Title to land was held under one of four overlapping legal regimes, and the courts of the Federal Republic recognised all four.
1. Customary tenure. Across most of Southern Nigeria, land was held by *families* under the doctrine articulated by the West African Court of Appeal in *Amodu Tijani v. Secretary, Southern Nigeria* [1921] 2 AC 399 — the lineage owned the land in perpetuity through the head of family acting on behalf of the family. Outright sale was foreign to the customary law; land was *granted* to outsiders under terms of customary tenancy, with the family head retaining a reversionary interest. In Yoruba land the doctrine of the Idejo (white-cap chiefs) of Lagos and the *baale* of the Yoruba interior produced a more individualised system of original grantors; in Igbo land the *umunna* (patrilineage) held land collectively; in Tiv land the *tar* (clan land) was held under continuous redistribution. Customary title was unwritten, transferable only by family consent, and enforceable in the customary courts established by the 1933 Native Courts Ordinance.
2. English freehold. From the 1861 Treaty of Cession of Lagos onward, plots in Lagos and a handful of other coastal towns came under English common-law conveyancing. Freehold deeds were registered at the Lands Registry, transferred by sale, mortgageable to banks. By 1978 there were roughly 400,000 registered freehold plots in the country, almost all of them in Lagos, Port Harcourt, Calabar, Warri and Sapele.
3. Leasehold from regional governments. The 1900 Northern Nigeria Land Proclamation and the 1910 Native Lands Acquisition Ordinance had vested radical title in all Northern land in the British Crown and, after 1960, in the Northern Region government. Land in the North was held by Nigerians on statutory rights of occupancy granted by the Minister of Lands and Survey for terms of up to 99 years. The Western and Eastern Regions had retained customary tenure but had separately acquired large tracts for plantations, public works and government reservations.
4. Foreign concessions. The Royal Niger Company, the United Africa Company, John Holt, the railway companies and the mining concessionaires had been granted long-term leases over substantial areas — the most notorious being the 99-year mineral royalties concession that delivered Nigerian palm oil, tin, columbite and coal under royalty terms negotiated in London.
## The credit consequence
Family land could not be mortgaged. The 1921 *Amodu Tijani* doctrine, reinforced by *Coker v. Coker* [1938] and *Esan v. Faro* [1947], held that the family head could not alienate family land without the consent of the principal members of the family; and the principal members could not, in practice, all consent to a single mortgage that would expose the family land to foreclosure. The result, by 1978, was that the overwhelming bulk of Nigerian land — perhaps 90 per cent — could not be used as collateral for a bank loan. The customary system produced security of tenure for families. It produced no credit. (See *The Credit Vacuum — Nigeria's Missing Middle Class*.)
## The Daniels Commission (1977)
The General Olusegun Obasanjo administration appointed the Land Use Panel under the chairmanship of Justice Chukwunweike Idigbe in 1977. The panel's terms of reference, drafted in the Cabinet Office, were three: harmonise the four tenure regimes into one; secure title for the federal and state governments to acquire land for development without paying customary compensation; and create a tenure register that would make Nigerian land mortgageable for credit.
The panel reported in November 1977. It recommended a graduated reform that would *register* customary titles, *limit* family-consent requirements for mortgages, and *acquire* by compulsory purchase only specifically designated tracts. It did not recommend the vesting of all Nigerian land in state governors.
The Supreme Military Council rejected the panel's recommendations. The legislation drafted by the Cabinet Office and signed by General Obasanjo as Decree No. 6 of 1978 — the Land Use Decree — went substantially further than the panel had advised. It is the subject of Act II.