An Estate Surveyor and Valuer ESV Momoh Arunge Jimoh, said there are unique peculiarities when assessing crops and economic trees for compensation in Abuja.
ESV Jimoh stated this yesterday in Abuja .
He said that assessment of crops and economic trees was easy at that initial time because natural trees like Locust beans, Shear butter, Dinya, Achile, and Maje were the main economic trees scattered over the lands.
Others are economic trees like Mango, Orange, Guava, Pawpaw, Banana, amongst others are grew mostly as wild trees.
He added that the cultivation of cash crops like Yam, Cassava, Ground nut, Guinea corn, Beans were the major preoccupation of the farmers.
According to him,
the FCT, Abuja is the Administrative Capital of Nigeria.This came into being in October 1st, 1991 when the federal seat of Government was moved from Lagos to Abuja. This development gave rise to massive development of various class of building structures and other infrastructures in Abuja.
In so doing, lands has to be acquired from the ingenious settlers for the development projects thereby leading to displacement from their ancestral farmlands.
“The law requires that they be paid compensation for such lands compulsorily acquired for overriding public interest”.
He maintained that over time, farmers replaced the practice of real crops cultivation and natural economic trees on the land with speculative planting.
“Cashew, Malina, Zogelle, Banana became their preoccupation of what took over the farming space”.
He reiterated that these trees were planted so close to each other that walk-in-space between them is almost impossible.
“The sole reason for this practice was the notion that the more trees counted on your farmlands the more compensation you get.
“What ordinarily would have been a common agricultural practice became speculative business tendencies.
To carry out assessment for compensation, the farmland owners normally insists that all items of economic trees found on the land be counted verbatim not minding the cost implications to the acquiring authority”.
“This practice led to the introduction of Spacing as a way of check mating the speculative tendencies of those engaged in overcrowding their agricultural land space to gain an undue advantage in compensation assessment and payment. By this method, it is reasoned that in arable farming, each category of trees has certain space requirements from one another for optimal yield”.
“For example Mango, Cashew has 7.5m apart while Zogelle has 2.0m apart. This reasonable distance apart will ensure less competition for the required soil nutrients, water and air supplied thereby guaranteeing maximum yield. In the long run, sum to be paid for compensation will be affordable to the acquiring authority. To what extent this spacing theory has successfully been implemented is a story for another day”, he stated .
He advised that using a Professional Estate Surveyor & Valuer, to ensure that you consult widely before conclusion any time you are retained to give your opinion on the value of crops and economic trees for purposes of compensation within the FCT
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