Governor’s Consent: How bureaucracy robs govt of huge revenue
Acquiring a governor’s consent in the course of buying any property further authenticates the legality of such transaction under the auspices of the state government as stipulated in Section 22 of the Land Use Act of 1978.
Most state governments, especially Lagos State, under Babatunde Fashola led administration has tried in recent time in reducing the cumbersome process of acquiring the “highly priced” Governor’s Consent.
However, most property buyers still express apathy towards acquiring this elusive document, as a result of the high cost and numerous bottle necks associated with the process.
Unfortunately, without a Governor’s Consent, one cannot also obtain a building plan approval. The resultant effect of this is that most property buyers buy land, develop and eventually build without an approved building plan, leading to a rise in building collapse in the state
An expected 60- day period which has been reviewed to 30-days in 2005 is the allotted time to obtain a consent following the submission of a duly completed application; this is however a distant reality from happenings in recent times as the process sometimes extends to as long as one year.
Hakeem Muri-Okunola, permanent secretary Land Bureau, Lagos state recently in a ministerial briefing revealed that the state’s Land Bureau have undertaken an analysis of the fair market value for all properties across the State for the purpose of adopting values for land transactions within the State.
According to him, the bureau has presented for the consideration of the council and relevant stakeholders an adoption of these fair market rates, a reduction to single digits, percentages chargeable as transactional costs to meet international acceptable standards.
“This is in response to your yearnings and the government resolve to ensure transparency in assessments which in turn reduces if not eliminate delay and corruption”, he added.
A total of 7,349 applications received and processed by the state’s land bureau raked in a total of N2,960,070,432.55 as against a target of N2,984,500,000 in 2012.
While this might seem as a major breakthrough by the states land bureau, Industry chiefs believe that a larger chunk of property transactions within the state are carried out without acquiring the Governor’s Consent as a result of the high cost and hectic process of acquiring the document.
On the state’s part, this is a huge loss of supposed Internally Generate Revenue (IGR) to bureaucracy which should be reviewed and simplified; there is also an urgent need for the huge cost to be reduced to make more property buyers see the need to acquire the consent
The lack of an effective documentation of all property transactions in the state equally denies the state government the luxury of making informed decisions on property growth within the state.
By: ODINAKA MBONU