Edo State government has said it has deployed technology to ease the process of land registration and improve land management in the state.
Frank Evbuomwan, managing director, Edo State Geographic Information Service Agency (EdoGIS), disclosed this in an interview with journalists in Benin City.
He noted that the ease and convenience in processing title documents for landed property and the improved land administration has opened the state for economic growth and attracted several investors.
According to Evbuomwan, “The Certificates of Occupancy (C-of-O) that we offer now are all digital, including the entire filing system which is captured online. The era of missing files is over.
“Also, the electronic process helps in document retrieval as we are able to instantaneously retrieve whatever document we need. A critical factor to digitizing the C-of-O process was having a digital mapping of the entire state whereby we captured the entire land mass of the state using GIS technologies and this has enabled us to drill down plot by plot to every property in the state.
“So, not only do we have the capacity to determine the extent of a property, we are also able to digitally store the ownership information of the property. This means that it is impossible for a piece of land to have double ownership; this is a major boost for businessmen because once you have an EdoGIS C-of-O, you can be assured that another certificate cannot be issued on that same property without permission.”
Speaking on the pricing and duration for processing the C-of-O, Evbuomwan noted, “At the moment, the basic price is N50,000 depending on the size of the land. An average retail investor who has 900square meters of land popularly called 100ft by 100ft, and wants to use it for residential development would get his or her certificate for less than N80,000 all-in cost. This is a far cry from the past when getting that same C-of-O can cost over a million naira. The certificate will be ready in 60 to 90 working days.”
