Can Public Purpose under the Land Use Act Covers Compulsory Acquisition for Private Investment? Judicial Attitudes in Nigeria?

Compulsory acquisition of land is an opportunity given to government to acquire land from individual for public purpose or public interest. Commercialization and privatization of public enterprises necessitate the government to acquire land from individual for private investment. Section 43 and 44 of the Nigerian constitution, 1999 and section 28 and 51 of land Use Act, 1978 sanctioned the acquisition provided it’s for overriding public interest. the contention is can private investment qualifies as public purpose for the purposes of compulsory acquisition bearing in mind, the land is taken from individual person and given to individual private investor/entity and not for the direct use by government for public benefit. Using doctrinal methodology and content analysis tool; this article is aimed at perusing and analyzing judicial attitudes of Nigerian courts in interpreting the phrase ‘public purpose’ as to whether it covers private investment or not. At the end it was found that even though some judges did not consider private investment as public purpose but the liberal interpretation of section 51 of land Use Act coupled with current global economic realities and the principle that public interest or utility can be achieved through private entity not necessarily public institution pave a way for wider interpretation of public purpose to include private investment provided the investment has feature of public benefit/utility.