Evaluation and Systematic Desktop Review Protocol for Land Administration in Niger State, Nigeria

Abstract

Cadastral surveying provides the legal and spatial foundation for secure land tenure, effective land-use planning, and sustainable resource governance. Despite its growing importance, the cadastral system in Niger State, Nigeria, remains constrained by limited survey coverage, analogue workflows, infrastructural deficits, and fragmented geospatial data ecosystems. This study presents a PRISMA 2020–compliant systematic desktop review of literature published between 2017 and 2025, with particular emphasis on recent peer-reviewed studies, government reports, and professional assessments from 2023–2025. Major bibliographic databases, institutional repositories, and regulatory publications were systematically searched, screened, and synthesized using explicit eligibility criteria. Findings indicate that approximately 23% of the State’s land area has been formally surveyed, while cadastral operations remain predominantly manual despite the availability of GNSS-based technologies. Persistent barriers include inadequate technical capacity, insufficient and unstable funding, weak institutional coordination, poor data interoperability, and the absence of a unified digital cadastral framework. Nevertheless, emerging innovations—such as AI-assisted boundary extraction, cloud-based GIS platforms, and the National Geospatial Data Infrastructure (NGDI)—offer substantial opportunities for reform. Based on synthesized evidence, the study proposes a structured, multi-pillar roadmap encompassing institutional reform, capacity development, standardized datasets, and phased adoption of digital geospatial technologies. The review contributes to contemporary scholarship on digital land administration and provides actionable guidance for policymakers, survey professionals, and geospatial agencies in Nigeria and comparable developing contexts.