A Comment on the Assertion that 'The Notion of Individual Ownership is Quite Foreign to Native Ideas: Land Belongs to the Family and Never to the Individual'

Abstract

This short essay has briefly analyzed the concept of land ownership under Nigerian customary law. In so doing, the paper has critically assessed the concept of communal ownership as enunciated in the often cited case of Amodu Tijani v. Secretary of Southern Nigeria. The present writer has provided grounds for supposing that the concept of communal land ownership as widely acknowledged in the above case is not absolute. Indeed, findings from data examined reveal that the notion of communal ownership carries with it an original individual ownership by the family head, which later devolves on his heirs as family property.