The Nigeria Middle Belt Brain Trust (MBBT) in collaboration with the Institute for Integrated Transitions (IFIT) has convened a meeting of administrators of formal and informal land tenure towards improving land administration in Nasarawa state.
The MBBT coordinator for the IFIT, Mr. Bimca Thomas Jnr, disclosed this on Thursday, in Lafia.
He explained that the essence was to identify and map land administration landscape in Nasarawa state with available potential opportunities.
“So we are in Nasarawa state to build synergy between administrators of formal land tenure and administrators of informal lands tenure, so that together they can work and fashion out policies of mechanism that would help improve land administration in Nasarawa state and other states of the Middle Belt,” he said.
He said this would equally reduce the grievances and disputes over land ownership especially those held under informal tenure by promoting the development of a land administration system that can act as a conflict prevention tool.
“Nasarawa state has been our pilot state so we partner with state government. Right now, we are working with different communities trying to build social cohesion by working together to create a locally driven, locally led social covenant,” he said.
He explained that numerous researches have shown that most of the conflicts that occurred in the state and even the states in the middle belt were based on civil conflicts that were not handled on time that resulted into identity conflicts.
“So one of the key issue we are working on is how do we support the communities, the government and the people, design community grievance management system that would help them address civil conflicts before it degenerate into identity and violent conflicts,” he said.
Thomos Jnr, explained further that “Our work involves helping to resolve longterm and Institutional challenges that have an impact on the longterm peace and stability of the state.
“We also provide the technical expertise at the networks while the communities and the people and government who is also a key stakeholders together will seat out and cover solutions that work for the peace of their people.
“One of our priority areas was training traditional rulers and working with communities based groups to design community grievance management system at the community level.”
Representatives of the various stakeholder groups were also at the meeting.
