Land-Grabbers and Land-Grabbing in Lagos and Ogun States in the Face of the Law
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Abstract
Land is an indispensable natural resource for both the survival and prosperity of mankind. The high demand for land resulted in land grabbing in Lagos and Ogun States, in address the menace, both states passed into law, the Lagos State Property Protection Law, 2016, and Ogun State Prohibition of Forcible Occupation of Landed Properties, Armed Robbery, Kidnapping, Cultism and other Anti-Violent and Related Offences Law, 2016, respectively. At the inception of the laws and their implementation, the inhabitants of the states thought that was the end of land grabbing. Conversely, the laws had achieved nothing in eradicating land grabbing in the states. This paper investigated land grabbers and land-grabbing in Lagos and Ogun States in the face of the law and doctrinal methodology was adopted for the research. The paper revealed that the law enforcement agents who are saddled with the responsibility of implementing the anti-land-grabbing laws compromised their standards and that the judiciary has not made any clear pronouncements on the land-grabbing cases pending in the law courts of the two states, such as to serve as deterrence. The study recommended that the judiciary in both states should brace up in dispensing justice in this critical area of endeavour, by decisively and timely, determining land-grabbing cases before them and that the Nigeria Police and other related law enforcement agencies should stop aiding land grabbers in committing crimes related to land-grabbing in both states.
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