LAND A MEASURE OF MAN’S WEALTH

The earth is lord and the fullness thereof and the “land shall not be sold in perpetuity for the land is mine (says the lord) for man is a stranger and sojourner….” By the above quotation, land is deemed to be a divine creation. As stranger and sojourner on earth, man lives on land and turns the virtues of land to his uses. Lands has continued to play a unique role in the process of the development of the human society. The achievement of man is such affected by what he makes of the land he lives. When man has any piece of land for his own use, how he uses it or what he does with it, what he gets out of it, is to great extent considered as the criteria for measuring his material wealth and also the character of his social relationship.

Land is important to man that the Africans even from the cradle have always viewed it with some religious awe. In the African tradition setting, land was not seen as a mere economic tool, rather it had religious and other social functions that the native rule was seen `to depend upon native land rule land system. Land in native land custom was believed to belong to the living, dead, unborn.

The land is primary capital asset and generally the most durable, serving as unlimited reservoir of sustenance for man for the use and enjoyment of a useable portion of its surface. Man who owns land may use it for subsistence farming or the production of cash crop, while being free at the same time to sell his skill and labour for whatever income he can get. When deprived of his land, the man is confined to only wage-earning starvation.