Government in Nigeria is both overinvolved and under-involved in all the wrong places — interfering excessively in land ownership while failing to provide the basic coordination and transparency a healthy real estate market demands. El‑Rufai's FCT land revocations showed what is possible.
Government in Nigeria is both overinvolved and under-involved in all the wrong places — interfering excessively in land ownership while failing to provide the basic coordination and transparency a healthy real estate market demands.
The Land Use Act of 1978 vested all land in each state in the governor, creating a system where the government is simultaneously the ultimate landlord and the regulator of land transactions. This concentration of power has not served Nigeria well. It has created bottlenecks in land allocation, opportunities for corruption, and uncertainty for investors who can never be fully confident in their title.
El‑Rufai's tenure as FCT Minister demonstrated what decisive government action can achieve. His land revocation exercise, while controversial, showed that it is possible to enforce rules, reclaim misallocated land, and bring order to a chaotic system. The key lesson is not that revocation is always the right tool, but that government can be effective when it has clear authority and the will to use it.
Where government is under‑involved is equally problematic. Basic infrastructure — roads, water, electricity — is often left to developers to provide, adding enormous costs to projects and making many developments unviable. Zoning enforcement is weak, leading to haphazard development that reduces property values and quality of life.
The ideal role for government in real estate is as a facilitator and regulator, not as a participant. Government should set clear rules, enforce them consistently, provide essential infrastructure, and then step back to let the market operate. This is the model that has made American real estate the most productive and transparent in the world.
Nigeria can achieve this, but it requires a fundamental shift in how government views its role in the real estate sector — from controller to enabler, from gatekeeper to facilitator.