Variation in compensation for compulsory property acquisition: Ondo State, Nigeria experience

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to assess the variation in compensation offered to claimants by the acquiring authority and the value arrived at by the Consultant Private Valuers, following the acquisition of private properties for road widening project in Owo, Ondo State, Nigeria. Paired-samples T-test was adopted in comparing the means between compensation offered to the affected property owners and the Private Valuers Value. Findings show a significant difference in compensation paid by the government to the affected property owners and the value arrived at by the private estate surveyors and valuers. Further analysis of the means score of the compensation paid and Private Valuer’s Value with the direction of the t-value of −11.092 revealed a statistically significant gap between the compensation paid and the Private Valuer’s Value after the acquisition project from N 1,771,914.25 ± N 1,450,840.39 to N 1,505,761.26 ± N 1,233,585.35 (p < .05); signifying a loss of N 160,218.52 ± N 136,226.71 to the claimants. The study concludes that this practice is a deprivation of claimant rights and falls short of the world best practice of fair compensation. In order to ensure that compulsory property acquisition is done legally, claimants should be justly recompensed.