ABSTRACT
Economic marginality continued to exist and the result of the agrarian legislation was to widen the imbalance between the modern and traditional sector, and further polarize the economic system. In both the English case and the Middle Eastern one, as also in present day African societies and other traditional systems, the crops grown on “communal” lands are invariably considered to be privately owned. The fadama system is a clear example for the need for privatization of communal tenure. In the Arab-dominated Fertile Crescent, the common farmland, the musha’ was associated with rotating the holdings, and no cultivator had any ownership rights over any part of the land. The endemic rural instability encouraged, thus, the practice of communal control of resources, and the periodic redistribution of land by the community. The applicability of the land laws to the complex customary systems prevailing in the rural areas of Nigeria has never been properly studied.
