The Olumide Memorial Public Lecture is held every year in honour of late surveyor Cyprian T. Olumide, first president of NIS and a pioneer of modern surveying in Nigeria. He was born about 1890 and founded the Licensed Surveyors Association in Nigeria in 1934; this metamorphosed into the Land Surveyors Association of Nigeria in 1960, with Olumide as its first chairman. In 1966 the Association adopted the name of the Nigerian Institution of Surveyors, and Olumide became its first president. In appreciation of his service and leadership, the Institution made him Life President, and on his death in 1970 NIS Council decided to immortalise his memory by instituting the Olumide Memorial Lecture series, the first of which was held in 1982.

Enemark had entitled his lecture ‘Land Governance: Supporting the Global Agenda and Serving Society', and in it he highlighted how all countries had to deal with the management of land. All had, in some way or another, to accommodate the four functions of land tenure, land value, land use, and land development. It might be that a country had advanced capacity and all the above activities could be combined in one conceptual framework, supported by sophisticated ICT models. It was more likely, however, that capacity would involve very fragmented and basically analogue approaches.

Land administration systems (LAS), Enemark extrapolated, provided the basis for conceptualising rights, restrictions and responsibilities relating to people, policies and places. Property rights were normally concerned with ownership and tenure, whereas restrictions usually controlled use and activities concerning land. Responsibilities related more to a social, ethical commitment or attitude to environmental sustainability and good husbandry. The lecture provided an overall understanding of the concept of land administration systems for dealing with rights, restrictions and responsibilities aimed at a spatially enabled society.

President Enemark went on to examine linkages between land governance, land reform, and climate change adaptation. Measures for adaptation to climate change and disaster risk management must be integrated into strategies for poverty reduction to ensure sustainable development and to meet the Millennium Development Goals. The land management perspective and operational component of land administration systems therefore needed high-level political support and recognition.

This public lecture attracted about five hundred participants, and was followed by a question/answer session and press interviews.