Abstract:

Existing literature has examined Yoruba customary land tenure from historical, legal, socio-economic, gender, and planning lenses. However, these rarely brought these perspectives together into a single account of how the same customary institutions resulted in protection and exclusion simultaneously. This paper addresses that gap, historically analysing how historical evolution, customs, social organisation, economics, politics, and social status of Yoruba communities shaped their customary land tenure system, and examining the contemporary legal, socio-economic, and physical development implications of that history. Drawing on documented analysis of historical, legal, and socio-economic literature, this paper traces settlement, kinship, and political history in Yoruba societies and shows how they are closely associated with a layered tenure system administered through the Oba, chiefs, and family heads, before examining how custom, social organisation, economic activity, political authority, and social status each shaped access to land. It analyses the implications of this history for land administration and dispute resolution, household livelihood and inequality, and architecture and physical planning, illustrated through a short case study of Ibadan. This paper finds that Yoruba customary tenure was never just a purely economic institution but reflects the society that produced it, continuing to shape land administration, livelihood, and the built environment today. It also argues, against a purely functionalist reading of the paper, that the discretionary authority underlying customary tenure has historically produced exclusion, particularly along lines of gender and migrant status, as often as protection. Its commercialisation has made secure land title itself a source of contemporary inequality. The paper concludes that sustainable land administration in Yoruba communities requires integrating customary institutions with statutory and socio-economic policy frameworks, and offers recommendations for land administration, dispute resolution, livelihood protection, and planning practice.