By TOCHUKWU JIMO OBI

Nigerians have yet again been distracted by an unnecessary altercation between the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Nyesom Wike, and a naval officer over allegations of illegal possession of a piece of land and prevention of government authorities from doing their job.

A lot of narratives are being peddled in the wake of that altercation by different people, varying versions about who owned what, whether the land had been validly allocated, and whether the minister's actions were authorised. While the details remain contested, the broader issues raised are all too familiar.

Nigeria, as a country, is a place where laws must be obeyed and institutions must be allowed to work freely without any interference from any individual. Yet when a serving minister physically intervenes in a land dispute, rather than going through the proper institutional channels and when uniformed military personnel inhibit government officials from exercising their mandate, the rule of law is weakened.

Reports suggest that very highly placed individuals in Nigeria have acquired landed properties in Abuja and other parts of the country using instrumentalities of their offices. This casts doubt on how lands are allocated, especially in the FCT. Cases abound where successive FCT ministers revoked allocations and re-allocated the same parcels to their families and cronies, again raising questions about the criteria for land acquisition in the nation's capital.

In this latest episode: Minister Wike personally intervened to take possession of a piece of land said to belong to the former Chief of Naval Staff and was reportedly prevented by military men stationed there. That is very unfortunate, to say the least. The minister ought to have acted via the institutions saddled with that responsibility, the land registry, the FCT Administration, the courts and must not physically go to the site, which then resulted in an unnecessary altercation that could have led to bloodshed if it had not been carefully handled.

Equally troubling is the question of deploying soldiers and security personnel to prevent government officials from carrying out their mandate by highly placed individuals in Nigeria. Such deployment undermines institutional governance and erodes public trust. The courts are there to address issues like this, to determine lawful ownership, to adjudicate allocation disputes, and to enforce revocation or restitution when necessary.

When people in authority, both serving and retired abuse powers, then it casts doubt on the credibility of the institutions they hold dear. And a public abuse of a military officer in uniform who was on duty amounts to abuse of office and stands condemned.

Beyond the personalities involved, this incident exposes the deeper rot within Nigeria's land administration system, a system plagued by opacity, corruption, and political influence. Until there is a transparent and technology-driven process for land allocation, with clear records accessible to the public, such disputes will continue to recur, often pitting institutions against one another and distracting the nation from more pressing developmental issues.

I call on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to constitute an independent panel to audit all Abuja land allocations in the last twenty years, with a view to finding any illegitimate allocations and whether allegations of land being handed to family, friends and associates by successive FCT ministers are true.

Nigerians are watching.

• Tochukwu Jimo Obi, a public affairs commentator writes from Obosi in Anambra state.