By Adebayo Eleduasomiji Adedeji
Land, as we know, is a free gift of nature and it has been the foundation for the development of humanity. The integral inhabiting of mankind’s on land has helped in fulfilling and advanced the capacity of human survival. Land brought to mankind the beginning of social relation which gave the first profession of an agrarian society.
For the past 300 years in Africa, Africans has been facing a large marginalized distribution of land which are majorly controlled in the hand of the Feudal Lord’s and the modern bourgeois to dominate the process of production to accumulate enormous wealth. The centralization of land in the hand of the few has caused deprivation to the masses and the survival of their livelihoods is under retrogression.
An examination of the past occurrences which has brought us to the catastrophic inhumane traits Africans are suffering from needs to be properly analyzed to see where the default has over time changed the dominant ideology of land usage to benefit social development. Africans predominantly practiced communalism that metaphors to pseudo feudalism i.e in ancient times, Africans lived communally and land was seen as community property. Overtime has population began to grow, leadership role was assigned to some people ceremonially in order to guide the decision making of the people but the idea never put a stop to the communal structure in Africa. Special land was given to those appointed as leaders and those who had made their clan or kingdom Victorious either by war, wrestling competition, etc. Those who were privileged to have more land had the privilege to generate more wealth through agriculture but their wealth didn’t result in the kind of feudalism practiced in ancient Europe and Asia where Kings, Queens, Aristocrats control the whole land and attached the masses to the land as their serf.
Before the advent of the Europeans in Africa, no King or queen has the full legitimate power to control land because it a community property own and controlled by the people, and Kings or Queens’ power was limited to acquire land. After the Europeans came to Africa, they influenced more extreme feudalism into our society which totally gave powers to the kings, queens, and aristocrats and put the communal practice of the African people into Oblivion. The European laws became predominantly abided to and communal lands were taken from the people. A new constitution was created which limited the natives to large land for production and the only option left was to be the laborers of the colonialists unwillingly.
After the sham independence of African states, the Europeans left the countries to their neo colonialists puppets that intensifies the constitutional structure of the colonialists, and the right to the ownership of land was fully given to the kings and queens on the basis to control the most important means of production (LAND) in the hands of the few. Since independence, we’ve been seeing how the capitalists and the traditional rulers kept on taking lands that belong to the people either by force or by colonial laws to justify the rightful owners of the land. In ancient Africa, land was shared among the people freely which majority of our great grandparents were given land for shelter and farming as marriage rights to protect the communal livelihoods.
All our ancestral willingness to protect the survival of our livelihoods has been killed in this modern-day capitalist society, the free gift of nature has become profits oriented from land, water, and even beaches in Lagos for instance has been monopolized to generated wealth in the hands of our kings. Life has become horrible to survive and human resources are the only channel to create wealth for few people who will use the wealth to structured the dominant ideology of the day to their interests. The unnecessary, unfair, and exploitative concentrations of wealth and power in the hands of the relative few have to stop, we need to decolonize ourselves from what historical conditions have orchestrated in our society and find the humane instinct in Africa way of life. The land is the commonwealth of the people and everyone who has contributed to the production of land should be entitled to its benefits. Social change of putting the welfare of the people first must be protected in order to create a sane society where human capacity can blossom and we must continue to speak, act and defend the principles that guide social justice for all. IRE
