THE CHALLENGES OF LAND GRABBERS ON RESIDENTIAL REAL ESTATE DEVELOPMENT IN ETI-OSA LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA, LAGOS.

Abstract

One of the major challenges that have ever bewildered real estate development in Nigeria is the secured land for development. While research have focused more on property development and rental value,  challenges associated with the land grabbers have not been given adequate attention in the literature. This study therefore, is designed to examine the challenges of land grabbers on real estate development in Eti-Osa Local government area (LGA) of Lagos state, Nigeria.  Survey research method was adopted and both primary and secondary data were sourced for this study. The target population were the prospective developers. A purposive sampling technique was used to select six wards from Eti-Osa LGAs. Through reconnaissance survey, 1751 developing sites were identified out of which 210 (12%) were randomly selected for the study. The owners of selected properties were reached using a snowball approach. Some owners that could not be reached by physical contact were reached through telephone conversation. A set of questionnaire was used to obtain data on respondents’ socio-demographic characteristic, accessibility to residential plot, general  assessment of land holder, level of security of respondents’ property, challenges encountered on respondents land, and size of land lost to land grabbers. Focus group discussion sessions were also held in the study area. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was employed to analyse the data at p value ≤ 0.05, while qualitative data were content analysed. Findings revealed that 77.6% of the respondents were male, 83.8% were married and 13.8% were singles, Age distribution of the respondents revealed that 6.7% fell within 21-30 years, 61.4% were aged 31-40 years. About 64.3% of the respondents had tertiary education and only 8.10% had primary education. Majority (78.6%) of the respondents were freeholders and 21.4% were leaseholders. On challenges of land grabbers to real estate development, the study revealed that although 78% of the sampled developers were freeholders and 21.4% leaseholder, 64.4% of the developers have lost part or all their lots to land grabbers: 52.63% of them have lost 900m2; 3.58% have lost between 90m2and 180m2; 15.79% have lost between 180m2and 250m2. Land accessibility has affected real estate development in the area, therefore is the need to put in place the stringent policy that will check the activities of the land grabber. It was concluded that activities of the land grabbers are inimical to real estate development in Eti-Osa LGA, Lagos state.