Houses, Fertility, and the Nigerian Land Use Act

Abstract

The case study in one rural Ekiti Yoruba village (3500 total population) in Ondo state Nigeria illustrated that fertility was affected by house plot exchanges traditions in housing tenancy and ownership local household composition and federal land tenure policies. Houseplots consisted of family owned land which was passed on to kin. Recent house exchanges were made on a more impersonal cash basis. It was argued that the Land Use Act weakened village land claims and weakened the security of houseplot ownership. Thus the need for children increased and federal family planning programs were undermined. The emerging tendency to limit family size was being thwarted. Communities were changing within a cash economy and status was associated with a large family and the possession of expensive consumer goods. Among young men and women aged 20-24 years the median desired fertility was 5 children while the total village fertility rate was 6.3 children per woman. Housing was not considered a substitute for children but as an additional form of security. A census and interviews among 70 women aged 15-39 years and 66 men aged 20-44 years were conducted during June 1991 and April 1992. Findings revealed that 87% of village women aged 15-19 years had attained some secondary school education. The village was off a main transportation route and modern improvements such as electricity and piped water were available. The interest in building and maintaining a family house with kin buried close by was very strong. Only 13% of the 333 houseplot transactions recorded between 1910-89 were cash payments of which 75% occurred since 1970. 49% were transactions involving division of family land. Cash transfers of land usually involved plots located on the fringes of town. Family land involved no transfer of cash or in-kind gifts. Family plots could be transferred to non-family members of another patrilineal group; 38% were transactions of this kind and involved considerable transfer of goods to secure the deal. In addition to cash transfers for land other practices such as rental housing on cash-transferred plots and surveyed boundary markers were being introduced. After 1978 land was nationalized; rural land transfers slowed and few transactions were recorded. The act was passed to promote equitable distribution of rural land but instead promoted land insecurity.