The launching of a new land administration portal called e-GIS by the Lagos State government on Friday is a major development in a state where land is regarded as an equivalent of the oil in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria.
Lagos is the only city in Nigeria where land commands so much value that in its prime locations such as Banana Island, Old Ikoyi, Victoria Island and Lekki, land prices are denominated in Dollars upto the equivalent of a billion naira and above for a standard plot of land measuring 1000 square metres.
This high value is driven by high demand and scarcity of prime land in the state. For its large size population estimated at 22 million, Lagos sits on just 3,577 square kilometers which is about 0.4 percent of Nigeria’s total land area.
Land transaction and administration in Lagos is not only long and tortuous, but also costly, corruption-ridden and risky, thereby making investment and ease of doing business in the state a nightmare.
These and more are some of the challenges the new land administration portal has come to address. At the launch of the portal in the Land Office, Alausa, Ikeja, Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu pointed out a few things the portal seeks to achieve.
1.Improve ease of doing business
The launch of the portal, according to the governor, is part of measures to boost or improve ease of doing business in the state. Lagos has always ranked low in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Index. Ease of registering property and obtaining construction permit are major suspects in the state’s low ranking status.
2.Fast land registration process
The portal eliminates all forms of manual registration, reduces physical presence of applicants at Lands Bureau offices, allows residents to register their lands from the comfort of their homes, pay all necessary fees online, obtain their title document, and apply for a Certificate of Occupancy (C of O) among other registration processes.
3.Reduce corruption in the process
A major cause of delays in registering property in Lagos is the human inter-face which breeds corruption. But with the new portal which is an automated process, land transaction has been transited to digital format, integrating them into the state’s registry and significantly reducing and saving cost; meaning that the era of hiding files or missing files is gone.
“Everything will be digitally available. Moreover, introduction of this process will foster collaboration among agencies. I think that’s also an important deliverable,” the governor said, adding, “it provides a secure shopping cart experience, self service options, easy online record and data search,” the governor assured.
4.Self-help land transaction process
The portal is designed to enable land buyers to analyze sites traffic and to know the trend through traffic, through the tracking of reports at the back end. It can actually do an audit of them and know how well an additional customer can enjoy a unique, exceptional service. It offers opportunity to track application progress, provide comments and receive immediate feedback on complaints.
5.Aimed to drive smart city vision
The new technology-driven system aligns with the state’s smart city vision, promote accountability, engender transparency and improve quality of service delivery to the citizens. “We want to, therefore, implore everyone to key into this new system and experience a seamless, secure and efficient process in land administration from anywhere in the world,” Sanwo-Olu said.
6.Security of titles and operations
The portal has an in-built robust internal business process workflow system called the Automation Land Administration solution, according to Olajide Babatunde, the Special Adviser to the Governor on e-GIS and Urban Development.
Babatunde assured that the state is committed to the security and needs of the projected large volume of applicants who will be using the portal for individual or corporate purposes. “The launch of the land administration portal is expected to drive investment into Lagos state, and also to improve on the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Index,” he said.
