CHAPTER ONE 1.0     INTRODUCTION 1.1     BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY Land use, land valuation, is among the oldest questions in economic theory, (Shavell, 2004). Land is an essential input (factor of production) for agriculture, and agriculture is by far the most important economic activity in preindustrial societies. With the advent of industrialization, important new uses for land emerge, as sites for factories, warehouses, offices, and urban agglomerations. Also, the value of real property taking the form of man-made structures and machinery increases relative to the value of land alone. The concept of real property eventually comes to encompass effectively all forms of tangible fixed capital. With the rise of extractive industries, real property comes to encompass natural capital. With the rise of tourism and leisure, real property comes to include scenic and other amenity values. Starting in the 1960s, as part of the emerging field of law and economics, economists and legal scholars began to study the property rights enjoyed by tenants under the various estates, and the economic benefits and costs of the various estates, (Epstein,2007). This resulted in a much improved understanding of the property rights enjoyed by tenants under the various estates. These include the right to:  

1. Decide how a piece of real property is used;
2. Exclude others from enjoying the property;
3. Transfer (alienate) some or all of these rights to others on mutually agreeable terms;
4. Nature and consequences of transaction costs when changing and transferring estates.

1.2. STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

1. Keeping record of lands and their owners has been a great task to government and the governed.  
2. Access to land information proves difficult that most times people are defrauded due to lack of land information.   
3. Illegal sales of lands without the consent of the owner are very common.  
4. Certificate of occupancy is usually a problem. Litigation which results to death and destruction  
5.  Valuation of land for the purpose of paying tax to government is not achieved. Hence the need for computerization of land information system.  

1.3. OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY The objective of this study is to develop a software that will keep information on:  

1. Land size, Land location, Land owners, Land use information.  
2. To facilitate the preparation of certificate of occupancy.  
3. To assist the prospective buyers to ascertain the ownership and availability of the property.  
4. To enhance preparation of lease.  
5. To forestall land speculation, with its attendant violence, destruction of lives and property.  
6. To promote land information security.  

1.4. PURPOSE OF THE STUDY The purpose of this work is to make land information accessible to both government and individuals who may like to acquire land property.  

1.5     SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY The project work will help in a good number of ways to make land information available to users. The software developed can:  

1. Keep a database of all the lands in the state
2. Enable retrieval of land information
3. Guide buyers on how to buy and who to meet
4. Educate buyers on the type of house to build in an area for proper town planning.

1.6     SCOPE OF THE STUDY This research work is limited to land information storage and retrieval using ministry of land and housing Enugu as a case study. The software developed will be carried out using Visual Basic to manage the database.  

 1.7. CONSTRAINTS AND LIMITATIONS Due to technical difficulties, limited access to confidential data, the information gathered was limited to house acquisition, usage and property ownership laws. All aspects left out were due to time and also confidentiality of some property documents. 1.8     DEFINITION OF TERMS Databases:  A systematically arranged collection of computer data, structured so  that it can be automatically retrieved or manipulated. It is also called databank.     Fee tail. Under common law, this is hereditary, non-transferable ownership of real property. Feudal land ownership, a system of mutual obligations under which a royal or noble personage granted a fiefdom Life Estate. Under common law, this is an interest in real property that ends at death. Leasehold or rental. Under both common law and civil law, land may be leased or rented by its owner to another party; a wide range of arrangements are possible, ranging from very short terms to the 99-year leases, allowing various degrees of freedom in the use of the property. Property is any physical or intangible entity that is owned by a person or jointly by a group of persons.