Property Rights Challenges on Housing in Southwest Nigeria.

Studies have revealed that many social and environmental components have constituted obstacles to housing production in the southwest Nigeria resulting in acute housing needs like other urbanizing world.Creating a strong institutional framework to enable quick access and secuity to property rights will help citizens and private investors to participate in housing production.Conflicting claims of property titles exist in most residential lands in peri-urban areas without planned layouts.This investigation which is domiciled in Ikorodu as a microcosm of southwest Nigeria examined the challenges of property ownership title and its implications on housing production.The research methodology used is a mixed approach of information gathering through a questionnaire distributed within some selected cities in the southwest of Nigeria and structured interviews with selected household heads among the sample population.A questionnaire was administered on 150 household heads and 120 were retrieved, which were analyzed using descriptive and analytical statistics to arrive at conclusions.The qualitative data was analyzed by thematic analysis.The results show that duality of right claims exists on most properties even when there is property title.While the government issues the property title based on the social contract theory of property rights, the traditional family owners claim ownership rights from the traditional inheritance theory.It was discovered that the Land Use Act of 1978 did not provide enough solutions to this conflict of rights, especially in the suburbs and peri-urban areas.This created social conflict and struggles over properties characterized by the incessant disturbances from traditional family groups known as "Omo-Onile" in Lagos State; The study recommended that more inclusive legislative works that will address the interest of all parties on land were needed to strengthen the land use act and that quick access and security to property titles was necessary for property owners and will encourage private investors in housing production.