GENDER ACCESS AND LEGAL SECURITY OF TENURE TO RESIDENTIAL LAND IN LAGOS METROPOLIS, NIGERIA.

Abstract

Access to land and secured tenure are some of the major prerequisites of sustainable housing delivery and human settlement development. However, there is a plethora of evidence for discriminating against women’s access to residential land and legal security of tenure in many developing countries. In Nigeria, where women constitute over 50 per cent of the entire population, the basic requirements for granting access to residential land with legal security of tenure do not take into account fair distribution and gender equality. Against this backdrop, this study carried out a gender analysis of pattern of access to residential land and legal security of tenure at household level in Nigeria using metropolitan Lagos as a case study. Specifically, this study identifies factors that determine men and women access to residential land and legal security of tenure; it investigates the gender-biased level of accessibility to secured residential land; and analyzes the consequences of perceived marginalization of women in gaining access to land for housing development. The theories of land market and land use; concepts of governance, social exclusion, sustainable human settlements and housing rights, as well as the gender justice paradigm provide the conceptual basis for this study. A multi-stage sampling technique was adopted for administering the household questionnaire to 2,054 respondents in 16 Local Government Areas that constitute metropolitan Lagos. Secondary sources of data include the records of residential management authorities operating in the study area. Ttest, Chi-square, Pearson Product Moment Correlation and multiple regressions were used in testing the hypotheses. The behavior of the major actors in formal and informal land marketers constrained women’s access to residential land and legal title documents. The zero-order correlation analysis revealed that the correlation between women’s access to residential land and social class, nature of occupation and level of education are as high as 0.80, 0.67 respectively (P < 0.05). Multiple regression results showed that the overall level of explanation of the explanatory variables is significant (R2 = 65.3%, P < 0.05). The study further reveals that there is a significant difference between male and female access to state serviced residential plots (t = 7.897, P < 0.05). Moreover, there is a significant difference between the need for and the granting of access to state land with Certificate of Occupancy (C of O) (t = 13.131, P < 0.05). As a result of inadequate supply of formal land, poor households are left to build whatever type of dwellings they want or can afford without any imposed obligation to conform to planning regulations. The implication of this study is that residential land managers and administrators are responsible for constraining low-income groups’ (including female-headed households) access to formal residential land not just border housing market system as revealed in the literature. Improved access to residential land and legal security of tenure for the low-income groups is germane to discouraging the growth of informal and legal houses in disadvantaged communities such as slums and squatter settlements in Lagos.