Land Grabbing and Its Legal Effect on Right to Property Ownership in Benue State, Nigeria

Land grabbing has emerged as a critical threat to tenure security and property rights in Benue State, Nigeria, particularly between 2020 and 2025, when escalating violent conflict, administrative corruption, weak land governance, and mass displacement converged to undermine lawful ownership. This paper examines the legal implications of land grabbing on the constitutional right to property ownership, drawing on recent scholarly literature, humanrights investigations, statutory analysis, and documented conflict incidents. Using a doctrinal and empirical review approach, the study synthesises contemporary research on land tenure, property rights, and the Land Use Act; analyses patterns and drivers of land grabbing in Benue; and evaluates how insecurity, forced displacement, fraudulent allocations, and administrative failures have eroded citizens’ ability to enforce de jure land rights. Findings reveal a widening gap between constitutional guarantees and practical realities, as de facto dispossession, judicial bottlenecks, inadequate compensation systems, and conflict-driven abandonment increasingly impede secure land ownership. The paper concludes that land grabbing in Benue is both a legal and humanitarian crisis requiring urgent reforms in land administration, statutory implementation, compensation procedures, and coordinated security and governance responses