Stakeholders in the environment and agriculture sectors have appealed to the Federal Government to review the Land Use Act to ease access to land and boost food production in the country.
They made the appeal at the sideline of a consultative workshop held in Abuja on Thursday.
The workshop was to support the implementation of the voluntary guidelines on the responsible governance of land tenure, fisheries and forests in the context of food security in Nigeria.
It was organised by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Lands, Housing and Urban Development.
Some of the stakeholders, who spoke with the journalists regretted that the current act neglected the rights of women to land ownership.
The Executive Director of a non-governmental organisation, the Women Environmental Programme (WEP), Mrs Priscillia Achakpa, commended the organisers of the workshop in their quest to salvage the rights of women in land ownership.
Achakpa said that the implementation and the responsible governance of land tenure would help Nigeria achieve its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and ensure food security.
She quoted a United Nations report as saying that 70 per cent of peasant farmers from the Sub-Saharan Africa were women.
``In Nigeria, especially from the South East and North Central, women cannot inherit land.
“If you are married and do not have a male child, you are not entitled to land.
`` This workshop is a welcome development. Nigeria is part of the signatory of the SDGs. SDGs No.15 talks about land, food security,'' she said.
Achakpa said that the workshop was coming at the right time, saying it would prepare Nigerians on how to implement the SDGs.
`` It is dehumanising that Nigeria, who is major signatory to some international conventions, is not domesticating them.
''70 per cent of peasant farmers from the sub Saharan Africa are women and yet they do not own land.
``It is the women that are driving the economy, especially in the agricultural sector, and yet when it comes to the issues of property and rights, the women will be denied,'' she said.
Achakpa called for the revision of the Land Use Act, saying that since 1978, it had not been revised.
''Each government is shying away from doing that because land is the most dominant resource worldwide.
``Land administration, acquisition of land, transparency in land governance, customary laws need to be reviewed,’’ she said.
A member of the FADAMA III Programme in Osun state, Chief Solomon Oyerinde, lamented the bureaucracy experienced during land allocation.
``There is too much bureaucracy in the allocation of land for farmers.
“If this is reviewed and implemented, we will have arable land to farm on.
``The beauty of our forest reserves have now gone because people can now go and cut trees without any penalties.
``The government should go back to the days where planting trees was the order of the day instead of cutting them,'' he said.
Oyerinde said that the government could assist fish farmers by allocating free hectares of land to them.
He commended the workshop, saying that it would help the government to know where it was going wrong in land allocation at the state and local government levels.
A representative of the Civil Society Organisation, Centre for Land Rights and Environmental Development, Miss Ijeoma Nnaemeka, called on government at all levels to consider women in both access and ownership of land.
``Our organisation makes sure that vulnerable groups have proper land tenure rights for various purposes.
``Land is always a source clash and one of the principles of the FAO guideline is to block loopholes for corruption and to ensure adequate food security,’’ Nnaemeka said.
The three-day workshop was attended by farmers, government officials, land experts as well as other stakeholders in the agriculture sector.
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