I was watching a video recently and I saw in some places in China that some of the highways are built around residential houses. This means that a double lane can be built while a house will be allowed to be in between the double lane or at the right Centre of the road.

I decided to do some research and read more about why the government of China can allow a house or houses to be at the centre of the highway without bulldozing or demolishing the house to give way for the highway as it is done here in Nigeria and I found out that in China, the government is not allowed to forcefully take over someone’s land or property for whatever reason. So if a highway is to be built and it cut across where a person’s house is situated the government will offer to buy the house out; pay off the house owner or take the owner of the house to another house somewhere else but if the owner refuses to leave the house, it is the law that the Chinese government cannot force him out or forceful take over the property against the wish of the owner. What the government will then do is find a way to build the road around the house without disturbing the house. That’s why in China you can see some houses right at the centre of a double-lane highway; the owners of those houses refused to give up the houses to the government or relocate from the property.

This is interesting because it is totally a different case down here in Nigeria and most other parts of the world. In fact, according to the Land Use Act, the government owns all the land in Nigeria, they are just leasing and renting it out to individuals for a term of 100 years. Hence, the government of Nigeria has the right and power to take over any property at any time, remove any property or force the owners of the properties out if they want to use the property or the place the property is located for whatever purposes. 

If a natural resource like gold, crude oil, diamond, bronze, coal etc. is found on your land, the land automatically becomes the property of the government and the government has the right to evict you or eject you so they can come into the land and tap the resources. You are only entitled to a meagre sum of compensation from the government. 

Be it as it may, the constitution in section 44 provides that every citizen of Nigeria shall have the right to acquire and own immovable property anywhere in Nigeria but a citizen’s right of ownership of a landed property is subject to the convenience of the government. The government is only admonished to pay the citizen compensation in section 29 of the Land Use Act, 2004 if they want to take over a citizen’s property. The government can come under the policy of public use or public purpose to take over any land from private ownership and in the scheme of things, public purpose or public use supersedes private use or private ownership. So your property can be demolished for a public amenity like a market or highway to be erected.

It should be pointed out that the federal government does not own land, it gets land from states. It is the state government in Nigeria that owns land which is why in land transactions, before completion, you would need the governor’s consent to authenticate the transaction and not the president’s consent even in the federal capital territory, it is the minister of the FCT that is in charge of land allocations and land acquisitions. 

Maybe Nigeria should learn from China that private ownership supersedes public ownership and not the other way round.