Possession by Dispossession

Abstract

Powerful transnational and national economic actors are angling for land often in distant countries, particularly in Africa, which can serve as sites for investments, fuel and food production for their needs back at home. Finance, fuel and food have been identified as the major drivers of the current wave of global land grabbing. The new wave of land grabbing is also developing with transnational companies and other investors scrambling for arable land in Nigeria as in some African countries for agro-fuels and food production. There appears to be widespread concern over how the Nigerian state has being colluding with foreign investors to dispossess the people of their land for agro-fuels and food production. Most lands that have been acquired are veritable sources of the livelihoods of poor and vulnerable rural groups. This is happening against the background that Nigeria is the seventh leading oil-producing country and ranks among the hungriest in the world with more than 150 million people in need of food aid. Despite the onslaught of land dispossession in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, it has not been given adequate attention in recent literature on land grabbing as in the Benin Republic, Madagascar, South Africa, Ghana, Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, etc. This study examines the process of large-scale farm land acquisitions, using the identified drivers. It further questions the economies of offering several hectares of Nigeria’s fertile land to some foreign firms and rich countries to produce agro-fuels and food, which are not consumed domestically. Based on field study, the work analyses the process of land dispossession in Nigeria, drawing both on historical studies and on the political economy of agrarian transition.