Thursday, 8th December 2022, 4:37pm. | Published by Gbenga Salau. The Guardian
A Lagos-based lawyer, Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa (SAN), has urged the Lagos State government to deploy technology to ease the process of land registration and land management in the state.
He said that it would open the state to more economic growth and attract several investors.
Adegboruwa, who stated this in Lagos, yesterday, during the first stakeholders’ forum by the office of the Lagos State Surveyor-General, said that embracing ease and convenience in processing title documents for landed property and the improved land administration would accrue huge economic benefits for the state.
He noted that the summit, with the theme, “Emerging Technologies for Optimised Geospatial Application and Service Delivery in the 21st Century,” is apt and in consonance with the present reality in the country.
Adegboruwa said: ‘’The process of bearing files from one stage to the other in the process of approval, the process of rendering advice is cumbersome not only to the judiciary, even in survey departments for us to do certain things.
“The people we are following, western countries have moved ahead. The problem we have with the judiciary is our conservative approach of governance to things and ways of doing things, the case I cited earlier lingered from 1997 to 2020, almost thirty years and yet the person is still in possession of the property wrongly acquired.
“It cuts across all areas of our life and the only solution to it is to deploy technology in tackling office management thereby removing human intervention in governance to a considerable level.”
He also urged the federal government to devolve powers to the state, local government and grassroots level, as part of measures to check corruption among the Nigerian elite.
“Powers belonging to the federal government are too enormous. You cannot sit in Abuja and begin to roll out money to several departments. This is what is brewing corruption in our land. If the state and local government are being empowered, they will use their resources to better the lives of their people.”
Earlier, the Permanent Secretary/Surveyor-General of Lagos State PS/SG (OSSG), Olutomi Ajose Sangowawa, in his welcome address, said the maiden edition of the stakeholder’s forum convened by the Office of the State Surveyor-General, was to forge a partnership that will strengthen the ties between government, property owners and stakeholders in the built environment.
According to Sangowawa: “This initiative will foster a more cordial relationship among stakeholders, investors and regulators, just as it defines, in clear terms, the requirements for adopting 21st Century techniques for optimised geospatial applications and service delivery.”
He said that the Office of the State Surveyor-General decided to engage stakeholders to discuss issues resulting from the rapid growth of the urban population in Lagos State and how the development of geospatial information could address the identified problems.
The state Surveyor General assured that “The professional team of the Office of the Surveyor-General of Lagos State will continually leverage geospatial information to deliver prompt, professional, timely and excellent services to all stakeholders in accordance with our mandate on the issuance of land information certificates, charting information, certified survey plans and preparation of composite plans.”
He urged all stakeholders to sustain the tradition and ensure that the forum would, “Design the roadmap for continuous development of the built sector, especially in Lagos State and, by extension in Nigeria.”
