CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1     BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY Land is a vital natural resource that hosts and sustains all living things namely; plants, animals and man. It is a fixed socio-economic asset that aids production of goods and services and hosts virtually all activities that take place on earth (Magel, 2001). The nature of land and types of its components dictate what must exist on it. Hence, savannah land hosts grasses while tropical land is characterised with hardwood forest among others. To an extent, land influences climate and dictates lifestyles of settlers on it cut across the globe. Land host houses and towns where origin of a man is traced. This is because all communities are located on land and their territories are defined by it. In another dimension, the sovereignty of a kingdom is a function of the area of land it occupies. This is an indication that territorial defence is with the purpose of securing or retaining certain piece of land. The above mentioned arguments reveal that land is central to continuity of life, indispensable in physical development and complex in social relations of production in the economic world. In other words, to every land, there is the socio-cultural dimension to it. As a result, conflict over land is often combined with strong economic, spatial, cultural and emotional values. There are indications that man’s complex socio-economic, cultural and physical attachments to land have placed land in a sensitive and unique position. Conflict interests among communities to secure territories, conserve socio-economic resources and carry out physical development activities and practice customs and traditions on land have given birth to untold crises over the ages (Abegunde, 2010). In another dimension, these have resulted in conflicts that have affected millions of people and resulted in lost opportunities in terms of social disorder, economic depression and destruction of housing and basic infrastructure in the physical development of communities (Gizewski and Homer-Dixon, 1995; Justino, 2004). In another dimension, all types of conflicts on land entail significant private and social costs in human environment. Conflicts as used in this study refer to disputes, disagreements, quarrels, struggles, fights and wars between individuals, groups or countries (Angaye, 2003). They may be short or long in tenure, but impact on residents and their environment in a direct or indirect way. Such conflicts may sometimes be advantageous to a group or affected parties. However, experiences in African nations have shown that the negative effects of conflicts far outweigh their merits (Colletta, Kostner and Wiederhofer, 1996; Bisnwanger, Klaus and Gershon, 1996; Shah, 2003; Salim, 2004). Direct losses on land can be reflected in loss of farmland, waste of land based mineral resources, urban land degradation during and after conflict, inability to conserve landed properties with cultural or historical values, inaccessibility to urban land for meaningful socio-economic or physical development programmes among others (Schock 1996; Addison, 2001; Abegunde, 2010). Of significance here is that conflicts initiated by tussle over land often results in further losses on land and its related resources. In other words, land as an impetus of development can become impediment to same in the built environment. This could be disgusting where much value is attached to land by the local people without government regulations. Literature has shown that this is predominant in African communities (Oyerinde, 2005; Ayo, 2002; Asiyanbola, 2008). To them, land is seen as the path to heaven for the departed relatives, the abode of ancestral and a devouring god to the defaulters and abusers of it (Ayo, 2002). That could be why Tuladhar (2004) conceived that land belongs to a vast family of which many are dead, few are living and countless are yet to be born. The study therefore centred on Ebonyi state, Nigeria, a populated and civilised region in the country. It is an attempt to understand land disputes in relation to land related resources and development in the study area.