Urban Land Use in Akure, Nigeria

             affects everything else are the trans-boundary effects of local and regional policies on land and allied resources, which today have assumed remarkable currency. Consequently, local policies are no longer viewed in their isolationist context, but within the broader framework of constraints and opportunities afforded by the 21st century information technology. As a common factor and denominator in the framing and execution of the social and economic policies of nations, Racticliffe (1976), was of the view that the allocation, use and management of land should be done to guarantee access and equity, which the Land Use Act (1978), aimed to achieve in Nigeria. In particular, population increases arising from uncontrolled natural births and rural-urban migration, and a growing commercial sense, have combined to re-orientates the traditional communal land holding status of the Nigerian lands (Ola, 1983). .
             Irrespective of the varying attributes of land, it is imperative that policies be directed towards land to provide the cross-cutting for streamlining and aligning all the countervailing forces affecting its disbursement and management. From the planning perspective, land represents a mosaic that ought to be regulated to ensure conformity and balance of the built environment (Bailey, 1975; Raticliffe, 1976). .
             However, the general inefficiency associated with majority of the developing countries' land policies, and the absence of secure tenure, adequate land management capacity, among others, have been cited by Bernstein (1994), Hardoy and Satlerwaite (1989), as serious problems precipitating existing land crises in these countries. Inappropriate instruments and weak institutional structures are among the cavalcade of problems plaguing the commodity. However, the existence of crises in the Nigerian land market is paradoxical, if not an anathema, judging from the whooping 913,072.64s kms of land that lay to be shared among the estimated 140 million Nigerians (neglecting the hills, rivers, swamps, and other uninhabitable areas).